Monday 19 February 2007

Desiring Heaven

"There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven;
but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart
of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. . . . It is the secret
signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable
want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our
friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our
deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or
work. . . . All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just
beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming
when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have
attained it."
C . S . L E W I S (The Problem of Pain)

We don't need to manufacture a desire for heaven (=new heavens and new earth) - it is already latent in our souls. We already have it as human beings. Our problem is that we bury it under a whole heap of other things and think that these things are what we really want. I think CS Lewis would have us dig down into our desires so that we might uncover what our desires are really about.