Sunrise
One dreaful glance over my shoulder I essayed. Not long enough to see, or did I see? The rim of the sunrise that shoots time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming I buried my face in the folds of my teacher’s robe.
“The morning! The morning!” I cried, “I am caught by the morning, and I am a ghost!” but it was too late.
-The Great Divoce by C. S. Lewis
To add a little bit of meaning to the above quote you need to know about the book it is from. The Great Divorce is a short novel by C S Lewis about a man who takes a bus ride from hell to heaven. Upon arriving he discovers two things. For one, he is a ghost. The man in the novel witnesses “solid people” who come and explain that he too can become solid. Second, he discovers that in his ghostly form, he cannot effect heaven. When he steps on the grass, it does not move, instead it feels like spikes in his feet. When tall grass gets blown in the wind and brushes him, it feels like a boulder knocked him over. The book on the whole is a hard look at grace, good, and evil. Throughout the book though there is mentioned the end of time when the “twilight” of hell will turn to the darkness, and when the sun will rise to morning in heaven. At that time will be the end of evil.
I couldn’t help but listen to that last part of the story over and over again. Christ said He’d come like a thief in the night when no one was expecting(not even Him by his own admission). Do you ever ask yourself what it would be like if Christ showed up face to face tomorrow? The more I learn about Christ the more I’m appalled by my own behavior. My stomach clenches a little bit at the idea of have to face Christ in my current state of being. That is why grace is so amazing. Just as I’m terrified by my own screw ups, I’m more grateful than ever for how much I’ve been forgiven. I don’t think Christ intended for us to live in fear of His coming. I think He wanted us to be prepared, because in that process of preparation we grow closer to Him.
How much more beautiful will it be when we see Him face to face if we have pursued a likeness of Him? I think its more than we can understand, but I do know this. On the day the dusk becomes the morning, I intend to stand in the rays of light. Not be caught as a ghost.
