catapult magazine

Come further in, come further up!

by Kacie Rogers

Summer is the perfect time to read. Of course, I could say that about any season, but in the summer some people like to be at the beach: what a perfect place to read a book! Other people like to stay indoors because the heat is so intense outside: what a perfect place to read!

I have been thinking a lot about stories lately. There are so many books in the world to read and not enough time to read them all. I am giddy with excitement when I start thinking about how many books I want to read. 

Truth in stories has been ringing in my days lately. My eyes have been glued to the pages of such stories as The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. It is the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia series. I find that I need really good, deep stories that reach into my soul and open doors — a breath of fresh air filled with longings of another place.

There are so many hidden gems within these pages. The lines leap out into the imagination and I realize that without imagination we cannot have hope of what is to come: the new beginning at the dawn of the new creation. Or, in Narnia, the old has died and the new creation is right before their eyes. The new Narnia looks and feels like the old one, except it is deeper. It is more.

A new place that looks so familiar and yet it is even grander than one could possibly imagine: this is our glimpse of what is to come. In the new Narnia, the children realize that as they run deeper and deeper across the grassy landscape and up waterfalls, it gets bigger and bigger. They only discover more. Passing through one gate, they see that the space they just passed into is even larger than what they just left outside the gate. How is that possible?

The old Narnia was much beloved because it was a tiny bit like the new creation. We can recognize the beauty of God in these tiny pieces in our world.

God gave us the ability to imagine places, characters and stories because it all matters. We are all part of the larger story that God is writing and we get to sub-create in this world. Perhaps along the way, we catch glimpses of what God has in store for the true beginning of a new earth at chapter one through these stories. Just as in these good books, the ending is the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of the characters.

So the pining in my heart (and the one in your heart) is not something that can be wholly filled here. It is as C.S. Lewis says, sehnsucht, or a longing of what he calls a thoughtful wishing, and these good stories I have been reading look beyond what we have here, in that they capture the love of God through story.

Our art of writing and using our imaginations is a gift and it matters eternally. All that we create here holds tiny seeds of eternity. God will make our old creation perfectly real in new creation. All that is good will be exactly what it was made for. All beauty here shows glimpses of what is meant to be.