Things are not what they seem

I’m reading the book Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive by John Eldridge. Today I read something that struck me. He talks about great stories, and how they often teach us what we see in our daily lives is not the full picture.

For example, in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy lives her life in Kansas in black and white. When she is taken by a tornado into the Land of Oz, she comes out of the house, and sees the world around her in full color. She remarks to Toto, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

In the movie The Matrix, Neo wakes from the death-sleep of the Matrix to discover the time is not 1999, but 2199, and the world he thought was real is actually a massive deception cast upon the human race to keep them prisoners.

In Genesis, Chapter 28, Jacob falls into a dream under the desert stars and sees a ladder “resting on the earth with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God . . . ascending and descending on it.” He awakes, and realizes for the first time there is more going on around him than he ever imagined. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.“

In Luke, Chapter 24, Jesus walks along the Road to Emmaus with two disciples. They are devastated that Jesus had just been crucified . . . “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” They don’t realize HE IS WALKING ALONG THE ROAD WITH THEM! It isn’t until he breaks bread and hands it to them that their eyes are opened, and they recognize him.

John Eldridge believes the reason this story is included in the bible is to remind us that THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM. There is much more going on in our world than we see or understand. We, in fact, live in two worlds, the world we see, and the world we don’t see.

This is good news for us. Why? Because the world we see is sometimes life sucking, painful, and deadening to the soul. The world we don’t see is much more real, wonderful, and long-lasting (eternal!) than the one we walk around in every day. Kind of like Dorothy waking up to life in full color. And we don’t have to wait till we die to live that life. That life is waiting for us NOW. In John 10:10b, Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

I would like to live that full life. How about you?