With all the noise in the world, do you hear the voice of God? Your calendar tells you what to do, but do you remember who you are? Being comes before doing. This is a call to put first things first. Return to the Lord with this daily pattern of prayer and devotion. Set aside this time as a sanctuary. Find a space free of distraction and follow this pattern.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3) O Lord, my poverty is the place where you meet me with grace. My spirit finds all I need in you. Amen.
Meditation: Farewell to Shadowlands: Excerpts from The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia closes with the end of Narnia, just like it begins with its creation in The Magician’s Nephew. The Narnia books are filled with Christian allegory, and perhaps by reading about the end of Narnia, a reader can get a sense of how Lewis imagined what the end of our world might be like. At the end of The Last Battle, the brave and loyal Narnians who are fighting their foes, the Calormans, are thrown through a stable door by their enemies. What shocks them is that when they go through the door that they believe leads only to their deaths, they actually find themselves in a country like their beloved Narnia, but even better. Not only is it better, but it feels more real than the old Narnia ever did. In the chapter “Further Up and Further In,” Lewis writes:
“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different — deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then he 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 is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!’
The last chapter of The Last Battle is called “Farewell to Shadowlands,” and the series closes with Aslan, the great lion, explaining to the Pevensie family that they have died on earth and are now joining him in the afterlife:
“‘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 for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Benediction
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21)