The new kingdom -

I have always loved the Chronicles of Narnia,

I have them quite nearly memorized. When I open one,

it's like greeting an old friend whom you haven't seen in a while,

but after you've hugged and kissed their cheek,

you fall into conversation, and pick up right where you left off,

and it's as if you never left at all.

They are treasured and worn volumes of joy and words. :)

Can you tell I love books? I so do. I am a voracious reader.

I've been thinking of Heaven a lot this afternoon,

and remembered one of my favorite descriptions is in

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. You may be ahead of me already,

and quoting me left and right...yes, I know you. :) But I want to write

a little bit out, and remind you of the preciousness of childlike hope

where the Lamb is the light, and the streets shine as gold. :)

Come with me....into Narnia for a time. Further up, and further in!

(pictures taken at St. A's during last week's conference, &

excerpts are from The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis)

~~~~~~~~~~

~ pg. 213 - "It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, and further in!". "

A Narnian lantern. :)

pg. 222 - Entering Aslan's kingdom:

"But by now the Mouse was again urging them to come in. So all of them passed in through the golden gates, into the delicious smell that blew toward them out of that garden and into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the trees, walking on springy turf that was all dotted with white flowers. The very first thing which struck everyone was that the place was far larger than it had seemed from outside. But no one had time to think about that for people were coming up to meet the newcomers from every direction."

pg. 227 - "Then Aslan turned to them and said: "You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be." Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.". "No fear of that,", said Aslan. "Have you not guessed?" Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

pg. 228 - "There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

"And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. " ~

I can never read through the last part there, when Aslan

tells them that they are there forever ... without crying.

It is such a beautiful, hope-filled, joyous description of the

longing that we have to be HOME, and with the Lord fully.

What JOY those have that are with Him now!! :)

"When we shall come home and enter to the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings; then shall we see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory; and that our little inch of time - suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome home to heaven." ~ Samuel Rutherford

"And he showed me a pure river of water of life,

clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river,

was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits,

each tree yielding its fruit every month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And there shall be no more curse,

but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it,

and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face,

and His name shall be on their foreheads.

There shall be no night there:

They need no lamp nor light of the sun,

for the Lord God gives them light.

And they shall reign forever and ever."

~ Revelations 22: 1-5 ~

We shall see Him, and His name shall be upon our foreheads,

and those who are laid up in Christ's treasury are not lost to us,

but are merely gone before, and He walks with them all the day long.

I'm going to bed tonight ...

dreaming of the One Who makes

HEAVEN ... so beautiful.

~ Jean Marie ~

Isaiah 61