Sometimes Heaven Looks Like This…But Just a Little Bit

The week after Christmas is probably our favorite week of
the year.

Just about the time when we can’t stand the heat and
humidity any longer, we head to the mountains of Lushoto with our best
friends. It’s tradition now; we’ve done
it almost every year we’ve lived in Tanzania.

There’s clean, cool air, long, deep conversations, obsessive
board game-playing, soccer, wiffle ball, Kindle reading, and no responsibilities
of cooking and cleaning. The kids play
all day together outdoors, creating imaginary worlds and new games and getting
fabulously dirty.

It’s a little piece of heaven. Except, this year we were reminded that it’s
not actually Heaven, when one of the teens came down with Typhoid, and one family’s
room was robbed of their valuables on New Year’s Eve. So we all left a little bit sad, because even
when we try to set up the Perfect Week, and even when we all really do have a
great time, the brokenness of this world still gets in the way.

On the way back down the mountain, we listened to the audio
book of The Last Battle, our favorite Narnia book and perhaps, one of the greatest
books ever written. It was perfect
timing.

“'[T]hat was not the real Narnia,” [said the Lord
Digory]. ‘That had a beginning and an
end. It was only a shadow or a copy of
the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world is only a shadow or
copy of something in Aslan’s real world.’

It was the unicorn who summed up what everyone was
feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof
on the ground…and cried:

‘I have come home at last!
This is my real country! I belong
here. This is the land I have been
looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is
that it sometimes looked a little like this.
Come further up, come further in!’”

Yes, we love our Decembers in the mountains of Lushoto
because it looks and feels a little like Heaven. But the brokenness reminds us that it’s
not. So even during great weeks like this one, we remember we are still in the Shadowlands. We look forward with
anticipation to Aslan’s real world.