It all began with a phone call.

Cheerful banter; jokes; moments of intimate profundity transpiring toward playfulness. A conversation between lovers, what else? Heartfelt exchanges facilitated by radiowaves and batteries, Britt and I enjoying our relational community through one sense–the sense of sound.

She was on her way home to where I was waiting patiently (a piece of toast in my hand, crumbs on my lips).

“Ok, I’m here now, can we say goodbye so I can come in?”

“Sure, Goodbye.”

“Goodbye”

I shut the phone with a smile on my face and listened for the garage door to creak open. Britt walked in and then into my arms.

The telephone is one part of a perfect metaphor for Christian metaphysical reality.

It’s just like birth really; a fetus surrounded by embryonic fluid; conscious of very few sounds or feelings–oblivious to reality outside the womb. But the phone call draws to a close, light and dark meet for the first time, and everything gets clearer. “In the twinkling of an eye…we shall be changed.” What better journey than to shuffle off a mortal coil to one that never ends?

Stepping off a plane in a new country for the very first time can be a terrifying experience. Familiarity, that constant, invisible companion from home, is found dead or merely lingering in the contents of one’s suitcase. The air smells different, sleep patterns are suddenly dysfunctional, and signs are relatively incoherent. It is a new reality.

Lewis describes heaven as a place infinitely more real. A place with grass harder than diamonds, where the water is so real that semi-real visitors (waifs really) can walk on it as if on translucent marble. God is the immutable fact–so absolutely real that anything with a hint of falsity is incapable of existing in his presence. I suppose that’s why we have to be refined first. We have to make a journey closer to the source, to cover the distance that had previously been breached only by telephone lines and radio signals. Finally there comes a time when the phonecall must come to a close, the door must be passed through and we arrive complete (and then it’s into his arms).