Innocence, Pt. 3: Come Back Soon

This is Part 3 in a series about Innocence, and it's relation to my life as a brand new eighteen-year-old. Click here for Part 1, and here for Part 2.

My last post spoke on the feeling of exile- that persistent ache that's common to all humans, the ancient knowing that this world is not as it should be. Thankfully, God would never leave us in the dark without hope. Lots of good things -books (particularly those by Lewis and Tolkien), sunrises, children laughing, fairy tales, enchanted gardens, thunderstorms, meaningful songs- are all like fireflies, giving us hope in the darkness and reminding us of what the true Light looks like. But though they may give us "glimpses of Eden," they still seem so remote at times; though we can observe them, it's from a distance; we can't fully become a part of us, in the truest sense. When you look at that homesickness more clearly, you find not just a longing for paradise or perfection, but the longing to be a part of perfection. In a paragraph following the one I just quoted, Lewis says:

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become a part of it...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it might not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

That concept of aching for something with all your heart, longing to be a part of a greater system, feeling as if the glimpse you do get weren't really intensed for you, but that you merely overheard some sceret exchange in a language you can't even begin to understand- it's so powerful and personal. It's something I contemplate regularly, and I've found only one other person besides C.S. Lewis himself that can connect with all these deep aches that I can barely find the words to express. The singer/songwriter/poet/author/all-around-awesome-guy Andrew Peterson has an album out called Light for the Lost Boy, which touches on themes such as innocence, exile, growing up, and mourning the death of the Little Kid Heart. In these past few months, it's become life-changing for me; God has really used it to strengthen my faith and give me courage as I'm navigating the rocky waters of "the grown-up world." My favorite song, "Come Back Soon," by Andrew Peterson, perfectly sums up in one bridge what I've taken two whole posts to get across:

Every death is a question mark
At the end of the book of a beating heart
And the answer is scrawled in the silent dark
On the dome of the sky in a billion stars
But we cannot read these angel tongues
And we cannot stare at the burning sun
And we cannot sing with these broken lungs
So we kick in the womb and we beg to be born
Deliverance...
Deliverance, O Lord!
Come back soon.

I find his comparison of this world  to the womb to be particularly profound. We all sense that even though this is all we've known, this can't be real life; this is just an echo of true reality, these are only the Shadowlands. There just has to be more, just on the other side, but we're stuck here for now. Just like unborn children, there's nothing we can do to hasten the day when the world becomes real and true again. All we can do is wait, painfully, achingly, desperately longing for home. But as long as we're here, might as well make this best of it, right?

Though it's terrifying and dark in this world, full of death and disease and copperhead snakes, we can look forward the Glorious Day when innocence and perfection is restored, and we are folded into the divine dance. Between now and then, though, we can hope. We can be optimistic without being foolish, as we're responsible for knowing the difference between innocence and ignorance. We can keep our childlike wonder, while gaining the wisdom that can only come through adulthood.  We also can allow Christ to work through us to make this broken world a little better, little by little- but that's for a different post. All in all, because it is literally our only hope, we can pray that Christ will "come back soon," and be content in the knowledge that one day He will make all things new.