Once upon a time there was a world beyond the wardrobe…

For the past few weeks Today Was Fairy Tale has been taking a trip through Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. If you missed Parts One and Two you can read them here and here.

Today’s entry is found in Chapter Five, Back on this Side of the Door:

 “’But then,” said Susan, and stopped. She had never dreamed that a grown-up would talk like the Professor and didn’t know what to think.

“Logic!” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”

Susan looked at him very hard and was quite sure from the expression on his face that he was not making fun of them.

“But how could it be true, sir?” said Peter.

“Why do you say that?” asked the Professor.

“Well, for one thing,” said Peter, “if it was real why doesn’t everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe? I mean, there was nothing there when we looked; even Lucy didn’t pretend there was.”

“What has that to do with it?” said the Professor.

“Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.”

“Are they? Said the Professor; and Peter did not know quite what to say.

“But there was no time,” said Susan. “Lucy had had no time to have gone anywhere, even if there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the room. It was less than a minute, and she pretended to have been away for hours.”

“That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true,” said the Professor. “If there really is a door in this house that leads to some other world (and I should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about it)—if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at all surprised to find that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stayed there it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story.”

“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds—all over the place, just round the corner—like that?”

“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”

I love this conversation between Peter, Susan and the Professor. I love the Professor’s wit, his candor and his belief in what’s real. I love how his ideas turn the children on their heads and open their minds to a whole world of possibilities.

A few days ago a friend of mine, who had just returned from a vacation, said to me that come Monday, it was time to return to the real world.

The real world? How often do we, just like the children, slip into a wrong impression of what’s real and what’s not?

When we experience days and/or moments of beauty, adventure, and joy there’s always a let down when it’s time to go back to the regular and ordinary of our every day lives. Without even knowing it we slip into a subtle, yet potent, mindset of resignation and acceptance.

We don’t believe the beauty, the adventure, the joy are lasting. At least not for us, at least for not for now. Those things are for a time…they aren’t what’s real.

And here’s where our thoughts go awry. Here’s where out sense of logic and truth begin to get skewed.

We were made for Heaven. We were made for paradise and Kingdom glory. And the glimpses of these things, the moments of beauty, adventure, and joy we experience are evidence of the truth.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes,

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

This “other world,” the beauty, the adventure, the joy, the longing in our hearts, and all the things of God…this is what we’re made for. This is what’s real.

Brave Prince, Lovely Princess may you wake up today to the fairy tale found in the world our hearts were made for. May you be reminded of all that is true, of all that is real. May you live, breathe, and find your bearings in the Kingdom of God.

May you find the real world in Him.