Remembering Toward Heaven
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it been.
Now far ahead the road has gone,
And must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way.
J.R. R. Tolkien
The sacred Romance calls to us every moment of
our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of
good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We’ ve
heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been
drawn to it while watching the simmer of a sunset on the ocean. It is even present in times of great personal
suffering---illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a
friend. Something calls to us through experiences
like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening
in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure. This longing is the most
powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for
wholeness, for a sense of being truly alive.
However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing
about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that
calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God.
We set out to discover if there is in the wide
world out there a reality that corresponds to the world within our heart. Hopefully,
we have helped you see in new ways that Chesterton was right: Romance is the
deepest thing in life; it is deeper even than reality. Our heart is made for a
great drama, because it is a reflection of the author of that story, the grant
Heart behind all things. We’ve seen how we lose heart when we lose the eternal
Romance, which reminds us that God sought to bring us into his sacred circle
from all eternity, and that despite our rejection of him, he pursues us
still. The Arrows and the Haunting both
find their place in Act III of that drama, in which we now live. But, this act
is drawing to a close. Our lover has come to rescue us in the person of Jesus;
he has set our heart free to follow him up and into the celebration that begins
the adventures of Act IV.
Where do we go from here? “This life,” wrote
Jonathan Edwards, “ought to be spent by us only as a journey towards heaven.”
That’s the only story worth living in now. The road goes out before us and our
destination awaits. In the imagery of
Hebrews, a race is set before us and we must run for all we’re worth. Our prayers
will have been answered if we’ve helped to lift some of the deadweight so that
your heart may rise to the call, hear it more clearly, respond with “eager feet.”
Our final thoughts echo the advice found in Hebrews 12:2-3:
Let us fix our eyes
on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the
throne of God. Consider him who endured
such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose
heart.
This marvelous passage is familiar to many of
us, so lets we should become dull to its power due to its familiarity, consider
Eugene Peterson’s translation from the message:
Keep your eyes on
Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because
he never lost sight of where he was headed---that exhilarating finish in and
with God---he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever.
And now he’s there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find
yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that
long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into
your souls!
Jesus remembered where he was headed, and he
wanted to get there with all his heart.
These two themes, memory and desire, will make all the difference in our
journey ahead. Without them, we will not run well, if we run at all. We have
tried to do honor to the riches of memory and desire in the preceding chapters
of this book. Let me (John) explore them more deeply now, as a man goes through
his essential belongings one last time before setting out on a long and
dangerous quest.
Living from
Desire
Jesus ran because he wanted to, not simply because
he had to or because the Father told him to. He ran “for the joy set before him”. To use the familiar phrase, his heart was
fully in it.
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