Recently, while doing some research on Charles Darwin, I was surprised to discover that one of the purposes motivating his voyage on the USS Beagle was to promote Christianity.

The captain of the USS Beagle was a devout Christian who wanted to see Christianity spread to all parts. He used his voyages to survey foreign lands and to spread the Gospel. On his first trip to South America, he had picked up three natives from Tierra del Fuego (the very southern tip of South America) to educate in England. On this second trip, with Darwin on board, he intended to return these individuals to their native land along with a missionary. The captain’s first choice, a local pastor, declined to go, since he had just married. Darwin had been studying for the ministry, albeit half-heartedly. Captain Fitzroy must have considered that Darwin would be a suitable missionary to aid in the purposes of his voyage.

However, not only was Darwin not a missionary to spread the Gospel, but he turned this trip into the catalyst of a theory and philosophy that has proved a fertile spawning ground for a wide variety of anti-theistic sentiments and movements.

All worldviews yield poetry to those who believe them by the mere fact of being believed. And nearly all have certain poetical merits whether you believe them or not. This is what we should expect. Man is a poetical animal and touches nothing which he does not adorn.
-- C. S. Lewis

In his essay, “Is Theology Poetry?” C. S. Lewis compared theology with poetry and concluded that while theology is not technically poetry, it does have a poetic element. Indeed any worldview will have poetic elements simply because people inevitably describe their most cherished believes in poetic terms. Even the worldview of naturalistic science—what Lewis calls The Scientific Outlook—is deeply poetic. It just doesn’t happen to be true.

--from As kingfishers catch fire, Gerard Manley Hopkins

We have good ideas, but are we incarnating them, bringing them to flesh and action? This is often a problem for the contemporary church. We have good ideas, ideas that remain in their platonic, abstracted state. We talk a lot, we do little, we change little.

The church doesn’t just have a lot of good ideas, it has the Grand Idea—the idea by which men can be rescued, redeemed and renewed. We get our word “idea” from the Greek word ίδεα, which means form or pattern. In English an idea can mean a thought, conception or notion, or a plan of action or intention.

The Gospel encompasses the greatest notion, the greatest intention the world has known. As the Grand Idea, it gives birth to a myriad other ideas—ideas for serving, loving, and caring for neighbors and nations; ideas for building, improving, educating and protecting. Is it any surprise that historically the Church has sent out so many world-servants of so many different stripes? The Church built hospitals as well as monasteries; it sent forth masons as well as missionaries, architects and archbishops, mathematicians as well as monks (in fact sometimes the mathematician was a monk).

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
--John 16:33

In “The World is Too Much With Us,” the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) lamented the condition of his society.[1] He believed that people in his time had become so caught up in pursuing material gain that their lives were constantly “out of tune”:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It [Nature] moves us not. (lines 1-4, 8-9)

Writing from a worldview that was more pagan than Christian, Wordsworth’s solution was for people to turn away from pursuing riches and turn their eyes toward Nature – finding peace and calm in the beauty of earthly landscapes and the cyclical rhythms of life.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun. 

        --from “Amazing Grace” 

July 6, 2010. I am waiting for my mother to die. As I was driving to the hospital from home, I meditated on the last line of “Amazing Grace”:  “. . . We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/Than when we first begun.”

 We live in a world of limitations – a consequence of the curse of sin. The curse of sin limits every area of life—never enough resources, never enough room, never enough time—particularly time. Time tyrannizes our human existence. “There is never enough time!” “I just need a minute more!” “I am running out of time!”

Here in the hospice unit, the shortage of time screams at you. The patients are running out of time. Family and friends are hoping for just a few more minutes. Everyone needs a moment more.

Such experience reminds me that we were never made for time and space as we know it. We were made for eternity. Sin has captured and trapped us here. Fortunately, God invaded our prison in the advent of Jesus Christ. Sharing fully our situation, His sacrifice began our liberation. Our preparation for heaven was begun. 

Heaven is the place of no limitations. There is always enough, even plenty. Heaven is represented in the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). A feast is a meal of unlimited provision. Heaven is represented by a house with enough room for everyone present (John 14:2-3). Heaven is represented by a multitude of people from every tribe and tongue, too many to count (Rev. 7:9). Heave is as consisting of limitless time, so limitless that to speak of time with heaven is unnecessary and even meaningless (Rev. 21:23-25).  

Here in northeast Arkansas where I live, we have the Ozark Mountains. Their foundation is karst topography—limestone bedrock easily eroded by underground streams and caverns. Some of the largest springs in the world are found in this formation in Arkansas and Missouri. Some pour from hillsides as great waterfalls. Others, like Mammoth Spring, well up out of the ground. Mammoth Spring issues nine million gallons an hour. It is a full size river, right out of the ground. Its fountainhead pours its life resource into the rivers and forests and cultivated fields. It nourishes man and beast, farm and town. Its supply is sufficient.  

Heaven is the presence of God. To be in heaven is to be at the fountainhead of all life; life at the source (Rev. 22:1-2). Heaven is so sufficient it is never depleted in any way. John Newton, the composer of “Amazing Grace” knew this. That is why he could write “. . . no less days . . . than when we first begun.” 

Heaven is so abundant that we will never reach half our days there. My father used to remind us kids to enjoy our summer break, telling us, “It’s the fourth of July. Your break is half over.” There will never be a “half over” in heaven. There will never be a day closer to the end than to the beginning because there will never be an end. Since heaven reflects God, it is unlimited in every way as He is unlimited.

In The Last Battle of the Narnia Chronicles by C. S. Lewis, the children go to Aslan’s land. They find it a place without limits. Like a mountain (Rev. 21:10), they could always go further up, because it is limitless.  They could drive deeper to its heart though they never completely reached it. So, they raced like the wind, free and unhampered, “deeper in, further up.” They experienced unlimited exploration of an infinite land for all eternity.

I stand here on the brink of eternity, holding my mother’s hand as she makes her step into that existence. I see eternity with eyes of faith. At this moment, it is more real than her fading pulse. This reality is growing more discernable by the moment. This hope blesses me with peace. The “no less days” of heaven are waiting!

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” Revelation 11:15

Postscript: I escorted my mother to that limitless land in the early morning of July 7. God’s grace and strength proved to be sufficient for every step of this journey.

For more insight to this topic, get the book, Heaven, by Randy Alcorn. Or read the article, “Heaven,” by Peter Kreeft.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 25:11

It is nearly a hundred degrees today. I am trying to think of a cool topic like the multiple inches of snow we had this past winter. During such long days invariably the television goes on. Many of us remember the classic Claymation version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Do you remember the character, Cornelius? I loved this guy. He was the prospector looking for gold and silver. Can you hear Burl Ives singing?

Maybe I’m just a soft-hearted fool, but I love getting a quick email from a fellow Centurion, friend, or acquaintance – a little nugget of gold shared by a thoughtful friend. Sometimes, when I am homebound on a quiet day, I click the “send and receive” key with nary a sentiment. I feel like Cornelius alone in the icy North Pole region clicking the ice—tap, tap, tap—send-receive – and retorting, “Nothin’!” when no one has communicated.

So it can be as well when we tap someone’s shoulder with the Gospel. We may appear alone, even a bit fearful of the monsters we are aware of “out there.” Regardless, we venture out, equipped with the tools necessary to discover hidden treasure of a soul ready for redemption. We may use various approaches or words, but when our “Jesus-is-LORD”—tap, tap, tap—returns empty, we tend to grimace and are tempted to give up.