Finding Forever Land: Approaching the Kingdom with Childlike Faith
Chapter 1
In the coming weeks, 4N6 Ministries and I are going to be doing something a ‘little different’. I’m currently writing two books of nonfiction. One is entitled Small Talk, Big God: Sharing Christ with Your Gift for Gab. The other is called Finding Forever Land: Approaching the Kingdom with Childlike Faith. The evangelism book is on brief hiatus while I shop it around to a select group of agents and publishers (agents and publishers prefer unfinished nonfiction books so they can have a more hands-on approach to its development).
With Finding Forever Land, however, I have different ideas in mind…including publishing through 4N6 Ministries. That approach gives me considerable freedom with how I handle pre-publication, which brings me to this post. I’m going to start sharing Finding Forever Land, chapter by chapter, each week as I write it. That means it won’t be thoroughly edited. It’ll be raw and unrefined in places, but I wanted to share this super fun, nostalgic book with you in real time, as I write it. The published book might be somewhat different. The chapters might be out of order. But, for the next ten weeks or so (if I can keep the pace, that is), I’ll be exhorting everyone to find their inner child! That kid inside each of us with so much hope, so little cynicism, and faith out the wazoo! I hope you enjoy it!
1
THE ROAD TO FOREVER LAND
I don’t want to grow up. I never have. While I think most kids dream of the day where they officially become a “grownup”, that was a burden I can honestly say I never went through. My very patient (often mortified and confused) parents can vouch for me, in fact.
Sure, I couldn’t wait until I had no bedtime or could eat chocolate chip cookies without having to sneak into the cabinets in the dead of night when my folks were asleep. But truth be told, my childhood was too good. My imagination too immense. The universe too full of mysteries to ever want to grow up and fall into the rut of mortgages, forty-hour work weeks, and Saturday night Canasta games with the neighbors.
You see, I grew up in a magical world. My bedroom sported a tall captain’s bed with a secret space underneath that was my gateway to Everywhere and Neverwhen. The shelves lining the walls of my room were adorned with tiny homunculi-like figures of plastic that shared in my adventures. Action figures of Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and best of all, The Six Million Dollar Man who were excellent friends, but also protected me from the shadows of the night.
And outside! Oh, outside. The entire universe was just a few steps out my front door. Hop on my bicycle and there was nowhere I couldn’t reach. Ancient tombs. Vile criminals bent on stealing a priceless jewel. Ninjas! There were a surprisingly large number of ninjas in my neighborhood during early 1980s for some reason. But we vanquished them all in time to be home for supper!
Then, there was Baseball. Climbing trees. Building makeshift rafts of driftwood to float along Lake Cumberland, one of the largest man-made lakes in the nation that marked the location of the lost town of Burnside, Kentucky. Flooded, I imagined in my youth, in similar fashion to the lost city of Atlantis several millennia ago.
All of this and so much more were waiting for me to run out the door!
Why on earth would I ever want to grow up? I had it all! Anything a red-blooded boy in good ol’ USA could hope for. I was living the life of Tom Sawyer, if he happened to also be Doctor Who, G.I. Joe, and Sinbad the Sailor all rolled into one.
Growing up was for suckers.
That’s what I thought as a kid anyway.
Unfortunately, Time takes us all, and I was forced—kicking and screaming—to grow up.
A little.
Sort of.
Some would argue otherwise. But I did, honestly and irrevocably grow up. And thank the Lord I did. The alternative wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone, right? We either grow up or we die. There’s no escaping it. Like the answer to the riddle of the mythological Sphinx, we start out young, then mature before growing old and eventually leaving this world altogether.
Growing up, no matter how I struggled against it, is a good thing. It was ordained by God, after all. We are born. We grow. We become adults. All with the intention of using that time to build a relationship with the Lord of Heaven and Earth. This thing we call Life is our introduction to God. It’s how we get to know Him. It’s how we learn to trust Him. It’s where He shows us just who He is and how much He loves us. It’s also where He begins the work of ‘perfecting’ us through salvation and sanctification.
Sanctification. Another word for ‘growing up’, honestly, but infinitely more wondrous. Divinely adventurous. You see, sanctification is the growing up of our spirit. Our essence. That immortal substance which makes us who we are as individuals. The thing that will survive when this old world and all of creation is nothing but ash.
Our spirits, you see, combined with brand new incorruptible bodies, are being prepared for a special place at the end of all things and the beginning of everything else. A place (and attitude, really) Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven. A place a child might call ‘Forever Land’. Not just Heaven, mind you, but an entirely new creation. A new universe. A new earth. A new everything that’s as crisp and Techni-colorful as Oz, as whimsical as Wonderland, and as adventurously glorious as J.M. Barrie’s Neverland.
And our journey all starts—and I’d argue, begins again at the end—as a child. A cosmos that can only be appreciated the way a child appreciates is, after all, reserved for those who see with a child’s eyes.
I was recently reminded of this—and the great losses I’d endured ever since growing up—when I was driving home from work one day. It was the beginning of summer, and as I drove, I began noticing the inevitable explosion of signs littering the various churches in town. Signs boldly and so colorfully announcing that perennial of events that almost every church in every town within the Continental United States (and beyond) hosts during those lazy days of summer. I am, of course, talking about Vacation Bible School. VBS, for short, if you don’t know.
I have to tell you, upon seeing these signs along the road, my heart was flooded by an overflowing tsunami of nostalgia. My memories nearly exploded with a myriad of childhood sensations. Sensations that smelled of purple Kool-Aid and tasted of butter cookies wrapped around my index finger like a golden ring. I felt the tacky warm ooze of Elmer’s Glue as I placed the strands of yarn precisely in the right spot on the two paper plates that would eventually become a hand puppet. My brow began to sweat, and I imagined the streaks of dirt running down my face after a fierce game of Red Rover or kickball. And just how refreshingly cool it was walking into the church’s sanctuary after an hour of play in the summer heat.
My mind seemed to have hopped into Doc Brown’s DeLorean, and I had raced back in time to the late 1970s and early eighties. To a time when everything was right and perfect in my little world. To sitting cross-legged on that little Sunday School room floor, listening intently as a grownup shared Bible stories using cutout cloth figures on a felt board. Of standing to say the Pledge of Allegiance to both the flag of the United States of America and to the Bible itself.
Oh, those were the days.
Maybe I was just a big nerd as a child, but there were very few things more exciting to me than VBS. I remember my friends and I searching out the different churches in my little town and going to each and every one of them (the churches, no matter the denomination, were smart enough never to schedule their VBS at the same time as another in my town).
See, it wasn’t just the games and the crafts and the friendships and the overwhelming sense of safety in these events for me. I was, even as a child, hungry for knowledge about God. I knew He existed, and I wanted to know everything I could about Him. It used to drive my poor mom crazy, all the questions I would ask her walking home from church each Sunday. I couldn’t get enough of it!
And this, dear reader, is the way God has designed children if we only let them be themselves. If we only just introduce them to the God of Creation. They will thirst for Him. They will hunger to know Him. They will strive to build a relationship with Him no matter what.
In the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke[1], there’s a little encounter between some children, the disciples, and Jesus. These little children—the Bible doesn’t tell us how many of them there are or what their issues specifically might be—are brought to Jesus for Him to pray over. The disciples, apparently appalled that these kids would have the audacity to approach their master, are quickly put in their place as they attempt to shoo the kids away. Jesus tells his disciples, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Luke 18:16b NIV).
It’s this verse that inspired this book. It’s a verse I’ve pondered and parsed many times over the years. It’s also a verse, I believe, we should take to heart and live our lives by.
Are you seeking the Kingdom of Heaven? Are you already on a journey toward Forever Land? Then the above verse seems to indicate that the best road map we can use lies within the lives, hearts, and souls of children everywhere. See, I think kids are born with that map engraved into their hearts. I think it’s in their DNA.
At least, that is, until we ‘grow up’. Until we mature enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Until we have experienced enough life to gnaw away at our innocence and wonder and become skeptical and cynical.
You see, there is a ticking clock involved in each of our lives, and once time is up—once we see ourselves as ‘too grown up for that’—that road map grows more and more faded. Worn out, crumpling, and smeared. The lettering, we discover, is in fine print and difficult to decipher without reading glasses. As we mature, it becomes more and more difficult to see Forever Land from the road we’re on as adults.
But I live in the glorious town of St. Augustine, Florida! Home of the fabled Fountain of Youth. It is my deepest hope that this book will become a sort of literary fountain to anyone who reads it. That by taking the words of this book to heart, we all will find ourselves growing younger and younger within our own spirit. That we will see the world—both physical and spiritual—with the bright, hopeful eyes of a child and that together, we can suss out the map to Forever Land. Hope to see each of you at the end of the road! Just be sure to have fun getting there.
[1] Matthew 18: 1-5, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-17
Stay tuned next week when we let out for recess and play a game of Freeze Tag. But you better abide by the rules of the game! There might just be examples of playground justice!
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