The Shadowlands

It's 1:30 in the morning, and my thoughts turn to the lives of those around me. There is pain and sorrow everywhere. It is our lot in life to have woes upon woes. I have visions of my colleagues, and the stories of their lives come to mind. One, a man who has never come to terms with his father's death, a soldier of the Greatest Generation who was always distant to his son. He travels this weekend to return home to give a speech about his father, the father whom he wishes he could still touch. I think of the man who I sometimes have mistakenly thought has freedom that many other men might envy. He is often out with friends at night, and upon commenting on this freedom, he confided with me that his marriage has been on the rocks for the past ten years. He leaves his house to escape. There is the man sitting next to me at work, who told me tonight that he pleaded with his wife today, asking if there was anything he could do to save their marriage. Her answer to him was simple, and one word: no. Another colleague, fired from her job as librarian, this week received a form letter from our employer informing her who her replacement would be. She knows her replacement, a woman whom she taught to play her instrument many, many years ago. And she is the daughter of colleagues that made her life hell as a librarian. It was hard enough to lose her job, but to be replaced by this woman is truly a bitter pill. And there is the colleague, a woman who underwent a sex change operation to become a man.

All of us are branded with pain. We all bear scars from wounds that seem to never heal. We all desire to be free.

I wonder what wounds lay hidden deep within the rest of my colleagues, or the men and women I encounter each day? Tragedy and sadness is all around. We can be assured that every passerby lives with sorrow. We need to see this. Tonight, I am reminded that I must see others with the eyes of Christ.

My thoughts turn to hope, and the chance for wholeness. I believe that for many, it will only come when they leave this temporal world. Hopefully, peace can be found here on earth. I long to see these millstones confounding my friends cast upon the ground, to see them released from the hellish parts of their lives. I have visions of them running with childhood wonder in a world where all pain is forgotten, all sorrows have been healed, and joy is all that they know. May God make it so.

'There was a real railway accident,' said Aslan softly. 'Your father and mother and all of you are--as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands--dead. 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.

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, ch. 16