I love the scene in CS Lewis’s book, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, in which Lucy runs into the wardrobe to hide from her siblings. They have been having enormous fun playing their game, and as Lucy pushes to the back of the wardrobe she faces the door certain that there can be nothing behind her. But to her surprise, she suddenly finds herself stumbling into a whole new world – bizarre and wonderful and full of more surprises than she might ever have dared imagine.
As we live this life with all its joys and sorrows, it absorbs our attention, and as it draws to a close, it is tempting, as Lucy did, to imagine that we have gone as far as it is possible to. But what if this life was only a pale shadow of what was still to come, and what if we could push through the end of this life to discover a whole new one – bizarre and wonderful and full of more surprises than we might ever have dared imagine. The writers of the New Testament are all agreed that this is indeed the case, so much so that they were prepared to die rather than deny it; and the reason for their confidence? Simply that they were convinced that they had met a man who had pushed through death and come back to tell them.
