Last year COVID changed our culture in profound ways that we are still trying to figure out. I had just launched this newsletter but decided to give everyone access to all the writing due to the hard times.
This year, I’m changing the approach of the newsletter.
With the tagline, “Killing Despair With Beauty,” I will use Further Up as my primary connection point for online social interaction.
Algorithms drive social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, making true connection difficult. Not to mention they are less trustworthy than ever before (more on that in future posts!).
So, I’m reducing my interaction there to a bare minimum and inviting folks there to join us here in this quiet private space. I believe this will strengthen our community here.
The Path Forward
This year, the bulk of my posts will be accessible for paid subscribers, with free subscribers receiving one monthly update, usually around the beginning of the month.
I’m also working on getting paid subscribers some early looks at my new book coming in 2022.
If you are able to support financially, it would go a long way. This newsletter and my personal articles on the blog take a considerable amount of time. As a fulltime freelance writer, I must fill my time with projects that pay, or else the bills don’t get paid. This newsletter, my blog posts, and guest posts at other outlets, like Christianity Today, demand a heavy time commitment on top of my larger projects.
Your subscription subsidizes the time and resources involved in the production of this publication, my podcast, and my website and gives Further Up a more active role in my income stream. It costs thousands of dollars to maintain websites, email lists, and the time investment in the writing is substantial.
Your support for the newsletter means the world to me and contributes to my ability to engage the culture with a message I believe can change lives, and allows me to make the newsletter a major priority, which translates to better content and more consistency.
My birthday is the 31st, so I’m running a little special on subscriptions if you like the idea of strengthening our community here.
I’ve set a goal to produce resources for my readers that will enrich their spiritual lives and will contribute to nourishing the Church. Moving forward, I’ll use Threads to engage in timely discussions on cultural events and multiple weekly posts focusing on beauty, family, culture and faith.
The idea for this newsletter came from this quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. Today, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this quote strikes you. What feelings it elicits.
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now ... Come further up, come further in!”
What do you think about when you read this line from Lewis? Does it give you hope for the future? Does it make you long for heaven? How can we turn 2021 into the year of nourishing one another with heaven culture?
I’d love to read your answers. I’ll leave my thoughts below.
When I looked into this quote by Lewis, I got the sense he was, in a way, describing joy. We often associate joy with a feeling of happiness, but Lewis here shows it as a place of wholeness and completion, how things are supposed to be, the culmination and satisfying of our longing.
So, when I think of heaven as a place where longing is fulfilled, it creates in me a sense of hope. And hope in the immediate, not just for the eschaton. Hope is nothing if it doesn't fuel our sense of being and acting in the world right now.
And this is what I think the world needs right now. People filled with joy. Not shiny happy people, as it were. But people with their eyes on a place of completion, who are willing to do the work of joy in the here and now.
Every single word in Lewis' quote and your words Tim make me yearn for heaven. As a parent of a disabled child my hope lies in heaven being a place of wholeness and completion of how things are supposed to be and of satisfying my longing for being with Jesus.
Yes! The world as it is, more and more, makes me yearn for this place. I often think about what it must have been like traveling with the presence of the Lord as cloud and fire, God among them. But then I'm reminded that he now tabernacles within us. And so even though I yearn for this complete wholeness, I can also do my best to bring wholeness, through the Holy Spirit, to others. That's a humbling thought for me.
I believe the Christian is in a bit of a predicament in this world. We are pilgrims longing for our true home, yet firmly rooted in Babylon. God is simultaneously calling us home AND encouraging us to work for the prosperity of the cities in which we are currently planted.
This quote reminds me that I can inhabit both at the same time and, in fact, I do. God is calling me home AND commanding me to manifest His country, His kingdom wherever I find myself.
We are to live now as we will live forever, for eternity. When we do, we have “come home at last,” regardless of where we currently reside on the planet. When we do, we bring Heaven to earth, Heaven culture to Babylon.
Jay, I have been reflecting on this idea. I can't remember if I've posted on it or not. If not, I will soon, because I'm including some of it in my book. Here's the gist of my thinking--let me know what you think. It's that, yes, we are pilgrims, but is it for our true home, as in a place? Or is our "place" or "home" actually a person, that being God. So wherever he is, there we are home. Does that make sense? Thoughts?
Yes, that’s it! He is our home and, therefore home can be anywhere. Yet, it is a home we are choosing. We all go searching for it and in finding it we realize it is not a place but a person. It is all Him: His will, His ways, His sanctification, His forgiveness, and His glory.
He doesn’t force us to go there. For him to just snap His fingers and bring us all “home” would not work. The journey of the pilgrim is a necessary part of the process. For us to live eternally in His presence, we have to agree to His terms, voluntarily. Otherwise, we would lose something essential about our humanness: free will.
That’s what I think we are doing here. We are searching for home. But for some, what He calls “home” loses its luster when it’s not about what they want but about what He wants. HE is home.
When I looked into this quote by Lewis, I got the sense he was, in a way, describing joy. We often associate joy with a feeling of happiness, but Lewis here shows it as a place of wholeness and completion, how things are supposed to be, the culmination and satisfying of our longing.
So, when I think of heaven as a place where longing is fulfilled, it creates in me a sense of hope. And hope in the immediate, not just for the eschaton. Hope is nothing if it doesn't fuel our sense of being and acting in the world right now.
And this is what I think the world needs right now. People filled with joy. Not shiny happy people, as it were. But people with their eyes on a place of completion, who are willing to do the work of joy in the here and now.
Every single word in Lewis' quote and your words Tim make me yearn for heaven. As a parent of a disabled child my hope lies in heaven being a place of wholeness and completion of how things are supposed to be and of satisfying my longing for being with Jesus.
Yes! The world as it is, more and more, makes me yearn for this place. I often think about what it must have been like traveling with the presence of the Lord as cloud and fire, God among them. But then I'm reminded that he now tabernacles within us. And so even though I yearn for this complete wholeness, I can also do my best to bring wholeness, through the Holy Spirit, to others. That's a humbling thought for me.
I believe the Christian is in a bit of a predicament in this world. We are pilgrims longing for our true home, yet firmly rooted in Babylon. God is simultaneously calling us home AND encouraging us to work for the prosperity of the cities in which we are currently planted.
This quote reminds me that I can inhabit both at the same time and, in fact, I do. God is calling me home AND commanding me to manifest His country, His kingdom wherever I find myself.
We are to live now as we will live forever, for eternity. When we do, we have “come home at last,” regardless of where we currently reside on the planet. When we do, we bring Heaven to earth, Heaven culture to Babylon.
Jay, I have been reflecting on this idea. I can't remember if I've posted on it or not. If not, I will soon, because I'm including some of it in my book. Here's the gist of my thinking--let me know what you think. It's that, yes, we are pilgrims, but is it for our true home, as in a place? Or is our "place" or "home" actually a person, that being God. So wherever he is, there we are home. Does that make sense? Thoughts?
Yes, that’s it! He is our home and, therefore home can be anywhere. Yet, it is a home we are choosing. We all go searching for it and in finding it we realize it is not a place but a person. It is all Him: His will, His ways, His sanctification, His forgiveness, and His glory.
He doesn’t force us to go there. For him to just snap His fingers and bring us all “home” would not work. The journey of the pilgrim is a necessary part of the process. For us to live eternally in His presence, we have to agree to His terms, voluntarily. Otherwise, we would lose something essential about our humanness: free will.
That’s what I think we are doing here. We are searching for home. But for some, what He calls “home” loses its luster when it’s not about what they want but about what He wants. HE is home.
Yes. Man, I love this so much!
I love this - and completely agree. You're describing shalom!
If I'm honest, I allow my efforts to "stay current" with news to derail me too many times.
(Cue choir humming "People Get Ready"....) But I want to stay on Jesus' Shalom Train both here and now and for all eternity.
Ha! Yeah, give me a ticket for that train ride, Dale!