There is nothing like stepping out your door into a bright and beckoning world. This is why people vacation in beautiful places. It is also the secret to the stories you love — that magical moment when the hero or heroine steps into a "brave new world". You might still remember that lovely catch of breath and skip of heartbeat the first time you followed Lucy through the back of the wardrobe into a snowy wood. Older readers may recall a scene from the first Star Wars film, when young Luke Skywalker steps out of his home in the deserts of Tatooine to watch not one but two suns setting into the horizon. Two suns brilliantly evoked in a moment that sense of “otherness” and wonder. Personally, I love the moment in The Alchemist when Santiago embarks with the caravan across the Sahara.

We are preparing our hearts to receive the hope that alone can be the anchor of our souls. One day soon you will step into a renewed earth, a young earth, sparkling like an orchard of cherry trees after a rain shower. Joy will be yours. How do we open our hearts to this after so much pain and disappointment? We have lost many things as we’ve passed through the battlefields of this war-torn world; our humanity has been stripped of such essential goodness. One of our greatest losses is the gift of wonder, the doorway into the kingdom heart. But each of us has special places and favorite stories that are still able to  awaken it.

Sometimes even a single phrase like “they strode away far into the night” can awaken in us a sense of longing that almost pierces. There are parts of us, no matter how deeply buried, that still remember we were made for this.

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