THE HEALING OF THAT OLD ACHE

(Post by: Lilly Hobbs – Blogmas Day Two 2023)

We are quite shy nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. The desire for eternity that each of us possesses, whether saved or unsaved, almost seems to be a bribe.

Our longing for Heaven, in a strange way, almost feels like we’re committing some kind of indecency when we open our hearts up to embrace it.

Yet we cannot shake it. There’s no way to get away from the fact that we yearn for something far greater, and far better than what we have been offered by this weary world.

C. S. Lewis brilliantly describes this in his book, The Weight of Glory, when he says, “Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”

This old ache that Lewis speaks of is no doubt a Heavenly one, buried deep in our souls, a fire which never ceases to burn but that we try to dim because we wish not to be told that what we’re really attempting to do is escape the darkness of our present circumstances.

I will admit, sometimes this old ache intervenes in my own plans and my own fleshly desires, so much so that I wish it would just vanish and leave me be.

Too often, I am more like Scrooge than I would like to be, and just as he begged the spirits to leave him to his own vices, I sometimes beg this old ache to stop “interrupting” my worldly experience.

Praise the Lord the spirits didn’t leave Scrooge alone, and praise the Lord this old ache won’t be healed until I reach Heaven.

The last thing I want is to do is become satisfied with the here and now, in this sinful and evil state.

Now, I’d like to take a minute to ask you, dear reader, to contemplate this question with me… What if this Christmas season, Jesus wants to use the old ache within you to interrupt your worldly experience? To reorder and/or refocus your gaze, your priorities, your loves?

Think of all the lives that were “interrupted” when Jesus came as a babe to save us from our sin.

Were Mary’s expectations of a nice, normal wedding and marriage not shattered when the angel appeared to her informing her that she would carry the Son of God? Were the shepherds not terrified and robbed of a quiet evening watching over their flocks when they received the news that the Savior they had long anticipated had been born to them?

How about Jospeh, the wise men, and Zechariah and Elizabeth?

Oh, but you see, don’t you?

They all possessed this same old ache that you and I wrestle with, and they were willing to allow it to interrupt their way of life because they knew only Heavenly things could heal and satisfy it.

Ultimately, for them, they longed for a Heavenly interruption. Is the same true for us this Christmas season?

“We all long for Eden and are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature is soaked with the sense of exile.” (J. R. R. Tolkien)