Today, I read the book Perlandia by C.S. Lewis.
The book is the second in Lewis’ one and only collection of Sci-Fi novels. In this story, Ransom, a language professor at Cambridge University is sent to the brand new people living in their own version of Eden. The beauty and life presented at the beginning of this book brings to light a picture of a world that is good—simply and genuinely good. It is a word that has not been broken---and it is beautiful. That is until the Devil enters the scene (hey, for a story to exist there must be a problem)…and he does what he always seeks to do, and works to bring brokenness to beauty.
He introduces vanity, death, and darkness to a world that was not made for it. As I read the pages about Satan’s constant struggle to break God’s creation and God’s beauty-I began crying in the middle of the library. That book brought a picture of what the beginning of humanity’s struggle looked like…and the real cost of man’s fall was illuminated. We lost so much …imagine a world without pain, without competition, racism, death, confusion or fear. We stepped away from paradise and we met things that we were never meant for.
This also brings to light the cost of redemption…I can barely carry the weight of the brokenness in my own corner of the world, and Jesus took on the brokenness of everyone who ever took a breath. He took on the pain of ever lost family member, every broken friendship, he bore the weight of hatred—and somehow he defeated all of it. I wish that I could communicate what it means to live in the center of that redemption-of the undoing of that corruption.
We live in the midst of redemption but still live in a world of rotting destruction. We still meet things that we were not made for every single day...
Confession: This week I am so homesick for Eden. I long to live in the world that I was made for-I want Jesus to ride into this place and to show us the full depth of what it means for death to die.
Until then…I wait, and try to usher the presence of Eden into every room and every relationship that I encounter in this broken world .
