IN A WORLD AT WAR, LET US SEE THE UNSEEN
I grew up without television. The apartheid government firmly controlled the South African broadcasting company and deemed the “little black box” a threat to their ideology. Television only came into our homes when I was a teenager, which meant that the radio played a vital part of my childhood entertainment. I would rush home after school, grab my snack and camp out on the carpet in our living room to listen to the next installment of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. The idea of entering another world through thin veils found in our world fascinated me and listening to the dramatized radio version of the Chronicles of Narnia captured my imagination far more than subsequent film versions ever did.
C.S. Lewis and his tales of Narnia were part of my spiritual formation as was his book, Mere Christianity, when I was a teenager. From him I learned of the thin veil between heaven and earth. Entering into the eternal is a vital part of our Christian faith and prayer is one of the portals. The moment we focus our heart to heaven and lean toward our Father, who is in heaven, is the moment we step through the thin veil from the temporary into the eternal.
Our world is broken, full of every kind of evil. Our Christian faith teaches us that we are in this world but not of it[1]. We are called to look at something different. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”[2]
How do we see the unseen? Like the children who entered Narnia, the secret is to find those places in our world where the veil is thin and where we can more easily enter the unseen. Apart from prayer, God has made many portals for us to cross over - the bread and wine of holy communion, sacred places, baptism, music, nature, art, kindness, mercy and so many other ways that fill our soul with awe. These are the thin places, and our faith is what takes us through.
When we wake up to news of yet another terrible war where thousands are dead, where children and the elderly are taken hostage, where inevitable retaliation means more innocent lives lost and where hundreds of thousands are left homeless and despair rains down and evil reigns on, it is crucial that we find a thin veil. We must pray. We must make the time for our soul to take in the magnitude of what is happening. Let us not become hardened to “just another news item”. Let us mourn with those who are mourning and let us weep.
Let us keep our souls soft by finding a thin place and look to that which is unseen to withstand that which we see. Our father in heaven loves all of mankind, and in him, so must we.
May we think on these things.
[1] John 15:19
[2] 2 Corinthians 4:18