The Leaves Are Rustling

“But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” – Hebrews 11:16

I stood the other day at the top of a massive canyon, white cliff walls streaked with pale pinks and browns and topped with pine trees, the river a pale blue frothing ribbon down below. After months of being in the same indoors, the sense of open grandeur was difficult to describe. The canyon itself was too big to be viewed at once from any given point; the dozen or so different lookouts could only give a sense of a part of the whole. The place where I was standing gave perhaps the best sense of scale, gazing down as I could straight into the dizzying depths.

Even then my experience was limited. I saw a bird soaring down through the canyon, and thought, that little creature is part of a space that I can only peer down into briefly before I leave. I can soak the beauty in as best I can to take with me, but I can’t really become a part of it. I thought of what C.S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory:

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it… At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”

These verses in Hebrews rustle with the rumor that here on earth, we can only see the things we truly long for at a distance. We are still on the other side, and if we’re honest, we feel it. But the place where we belong, the better country, will surely yet come. Part of this journey on earth is to embrace our longings with faith, to see that all the beauties here on earth are but a foretaste of what God has prepared for us. Some day we shall get in.