I remember when I was a child that I truly loved the song, “This world is not my home!” My granny used to talk about the fact that we live, breathe, and exist because of God’s grace. She always reminded me that NOTHING we have in this world should be held up as the measure of who we are and what our final desires should be. She also reminded me that my citizenship is NOT of this world. My citizenship was in heaven. Now, that made no sense to me. I did not get it until after I actually knelt down, apparently, the same night that she died, and handed my life over to Jesus. Then my personal journey with Christ began. Lewis describes it thus;
There was the charm, as we went on, of running out into evening sunlight, but still in a deep gulley – as if the train were swimming in earth instead of either sailing on it like a real train or worming beneath it like a real tube. There was the charm of sudden silence at station I had never heard of, [for me it was the station marked ‘Salvation.’] and where we seemed to stop for a long time. There was the novelty of being in that kind of carriage without a crowd and without artificial light. [ But the light of the SON was in my heart.] But I need not try to enumerate all the ingredients. The point is that all these things between them built up for me a degree of happiness which I must not try to assess because, if I did, you would think I was exaggerating. [AMEN!]
Lewis 1986, 41.
How does one explain the exhilaration, the adulation, the joy, the sense of knowing, and yet NOT knowing anything other than the fact that the most important journey of one’s life has just begun? After that night I had a level of expectation that I cannot describe. It was as if my entire family had prepared me for, as Lewis declared,
But wait. ‘Build up’ is the wrong expression. They did not actually impost this happiness; they offered it. I was free to take it or not as I chose – like distant music which you need not listen to unless you wish, like a delicious faint wind on your face which you can easily ignore. One was invited to surrender to it. And the odd thing is that something inside me suggested that it would be ‘sensible’ to refuse the invitation; almost that I would be better employed in remembering that I was going to do a job I do not greatly enjoy and that I should have a very tiresome journey back to Oxford. Then I silenced this inward wiseacre. I accepted the invitation – threw myself open to this feather, impalpable, tingling invitation. The rest of the journey I passed in a state which can be described only as joy. “
Ibid.
This is exactly what I felt when I just relaxed and decided that Jesus would not only be the conductor of my life, He would also be the engineer on the train of my life. He would take me along that journey as He saw fit. my Job, my role, my desire should be “follow Him!”
From Present Concerns
Lewis, C. S. 1986. Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays. Harper Collins, Kindle Edition.
You Are Not the Only One 
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