Master Mentor #21

Chapter 20 (Book 3, Chapter 10)
This morning, CS talked about hope. And he talked about hope in the context of having our minds turned to the hope of the future and the hope of heaven. Which is something that I can honestly say doesn’t have a lot of airtime in my mind. He says that we don’t talk about heaven because we aren’t “trained” to think or talk about heaven. And he’s right. We only occasionally talk about it or teach about it and it’s usually seen as the end-goal in the Christian’s life or in terms of avoiding the other place.
He said this, which caught my attention: “It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither” (page 119). That’s an interesting thought and I think that he’s right. Many Christians don’t think about heaven. Or we think about it in terms of “getting to heaven” or what we’ll “do there” (namely play harps and float on clouds… which CS deals with later in the chapter). But heaven just isn’t something that fills my thoughts very often. But I have a suspicion that it will today.
Later in the chapter, CS says this: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing” (pg 121). Good thoughts.

Jim