livin' in the Shadowlands

I've been plodding my way through Randy Alcorn's novel 'Dominion' for ... oh ... a long time. And part of the reason it has been taking me so long is because each page brings reminders of death and... well... that's not my favorite topic, so I keep closing the book for days, sometimes weeks on end. But for some reason I keep picking it up again, determined to trudge forward.

And now I think I know why.

Anyone who knows anything about Randy Alcorn will know that he's the "eternity guy." His writing revolves around heaven and I am grateful for people like him who challenge people like me to think about eternity more.

So in the novel, one of the main characters, a Christian, is murdered. Alcorn's description of her entering into eternity has helped to renew my longing for what lies ahead, while deepening my appreciation for what is now.

"She sensed intuitively this place she moved toward was the Substance that cast the shadows in the other world. If that place was midnight, this was sunrise. Up ahead was the twelve-dimensional reality of which the two-dimensional flatland had been but a replica. A very poor replica, she thought, the closer she got to the real thing.

Though she had not yet stepped foot on it, already everything within her told her this was the Place that defined all places, the Place by which all places must be judged. It was the prototype, the master from which all copies were made. The place reached out to her, playfully grabbing at her, drawing her soul as a powerful magnet draws iron filings."

Reminiscent of Milton's quote from Paradise Lost:

What if earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?

And from the author of Shadowlands himself, the brilliant C.S. Lewis, reflecting more closely my struggle at present:

"Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal."

That's the deal. But that's not all. That's just the here and now, livin' in the Shadowlands. But that's not all.