If you are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia you might understand the Sabbath better than you realize…and no doubt beyond even what C.S.Lewis himself intended his allegory to imply.

Early in the stories we are introduced to the Pevensy children - Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy who are sent away to the country side to avoid the London bombings in World War 2. While exploring the large old house, Lucy opens a wardrobe in an unused spare room to find it leads to another world - a world of wonder and delight far removed from our own.
Lucy is away for hours and hours having the time of her life, only to return and discover that no time has gone by at all in our world. Overjoyed with her find she tries to tell her siblings about the wardrobe, but they are skeptical. And looking into the wardrobe themselves they find only old coats.
Peter and Susan begin to be worried for their sister and wonder if Lucy is crazy or lying. And Edmond takes up mocking her for her story. Eventually all the children find their way into that other world of Narnia and have many adventures even becoming kings and queens before returning to our world and find that all the decades of their time in Narnia were merely minutes in our world.
How so like Sabbath this is in so many ways.
For most of us, Sabbath was not a part of our natural home, but nevertheless we found our way to it while exploring. We opened an ordinary door expecting ordinary things but finding instead an extraordinary world. Finding this glorious world, we entered in, passing to a time beyond time, and finding upon returning that we had not missed out on anything.
But what happened when we tried to share the mystery? We were met with skepticism and scorn. Those we did love best believed we had lost our minds. And why? Because this glorious thing is impossible, a world inside a wardrobe.
And much like the Pevensies our companions in this world can’t possibly put their trust in such wonders until they too happen to stumble upon it unawares and experience it for themselves.

When they are in our world they long to return to Narnia just as we do with regard to the Sabbath, but they can’t talk about all they know with others cuz only they understand the experience. And when they do get back to Narnia and we to the Sabbath they and we both hate to leave and long to stay.

In the story, Aslan assures them that one day they will return and come to stay forever…Just as in the real world, Yeshua says the same to us. That one day we too will come to stay in the forever Sabbath. When the children do finally leave our world again they realize that all they ever loved of Narnia was a shadow of the real Narnia that kept becoming truer and more REAL the further up and further in they went. As will we one day experience as we move further up and further in in The Way.

On this Sabbath may you discover much wonder in mundane places and may the Sabbath become ever truer to you the further up and further in you go.

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