Shades of Grey

It's been a very long and tiring weekend with all the birthday festivities and the residual 'over stimulized' three year old... (why we think this is a fun thing to do to our kids I am not sure? Who is it really for anyway, the kid or us?).. Anyway, the point is that Tim and I have been putting the kids down and then shutting down ourselves. Hence, no reading of the Great Divorce as of late. However, I will go back to chapter 4 and 5 for a moment if you don't mind. Something has been sitting with me, niggling in the back of my mind and I thought I would write it out.

Joe is listening to conversations in these chapters, over hearing spirits trying to help the ghosts, trying to get the ghosts to go on a trip to the mountains with them. They speak of taking their friends to see Heaven, that they want them to make the journey from the outskirts of heaven to Heaven itself. To see the face of God. The ghosts of course have many questions, concerns and ultimately they get back on the bus, unsure of the change, unsure of what lies ahead. The spirits warn them, that it's not going to be easy going, that the ground is hard and until their feet get used to it, it will be painful. This proves too much for the ghosts and always in the end they get back on the bus.

My mind had been tumbling around two things from these chapters. One, that this is a change, and that change is hard. One needs to want to change, one needs to want to move into this new realm, even if the road is hard and painful. This is where I also stop and ponder. The road is hard, it's a journey that is painful, not once were we promised a painless journey. We find a place in life that is easy, or at the very least comfortable and we are unwilling to make the harder journey to a more fulfilling place, a place where we can see God's face, a place where we can live into the beauty that we were created for. I have seen it in my own life, and I have seen it in friends lives. We live in the shades of grey, unwilling to move into full light and yet we believe it's enough, we believe that the sun will come out to where we are... but what if it doesn't? What if, we are meant to make that journey to the mountains? Hard road or not, pain or not? What if we could just make that trip, hard as it might be and see the Glory of Gods face, see the radiant sunshine and live under it's warm glow for eternity instead of trudging around in circles under a grey sky?