The world we dwell in is sublime. It is beautiful. As C.S. Lewis wrote there is a “deep magic” to the works of God, manifested through the material landscape. Even in its fallenness, the creation acts as a conduit through which He calls forth both joy and longing in the human heart. This is a truth too often unknown or ignored by 21^st century conservative Christians. Some of us hear the words “mystical” or “magical” and we automatically think ‘occult” and “demonic” and shut the doors of our hearts to what Lewis called the “Numinous”, the sheer reality of divine transcendence in everyday life. In this often fearful renunciation of every aspect of the supernatural world present in the natural one we are profoundly impoverished, for we ourselves are supernatural beings as well as natural ones. 

It seems apparent that among the healthiest followers of Christ are those who live with a regularly recurring sense of wonder at what they encounter in the physical world each day. Some of the most vibrant Christians are those who identify that wonder with something that goes profoundly beyond the physical and specifically points us towards the one true God. If we are fortunate we have all experienced moments when some vision of nature, or even of man’s creative output, has transported us towards another place, a place redolent of the eternal. We suddenly, and usually surprisingly, experience a sublime longing for something near us, but just out of full grasp. It is as if the Far Country of Heaven has reached into our present existence for a short time and this inspires a deep joy that points towards the infinite and clears our hearts of every other lesser desire.

What we want at such moments goes beyond nature, beyond the purely physical realm at all. It is true that the physical is not, as some religions teach, somehow evil or even inferior to the spiritual, but it is incomplete in and of itself apart from the spiritual. We live in an era of materialism, particularly where science still restrains the imaginations of human beings to the merely imminent. Scientific Naturalism tells us that the material world is all there is and that should be enough, but we intrinsically know that isn’t enough because we are intrinsically spiritual as well as natural beings. The natural and material worlds are not ends in themselves. They are, rather, pathways beyond themselves.

More than one philosopher has said that the entire created world is a metaphor for ultimate reality, that beyond what we can presently see, hear and touch is the true world where every one of those things is made real in some ultimately meaningful way. This is not necessarily to say that the present Earth we inhabit is an illusion, but rather that it is, for now, imperfect and fallen and can best serve as a fragrant reminder of what our existence will be when Heaven and Earth are finally joined together at the culmination of history.

Beyond this the achingly beautiful moments we now sometimes know are made possible by the actuality that even our presently imperfect world is still vitally linked to the perfect one where our God dwells. The divine is still present in nature as well as beyond it and His Spirit is the link between the two. 

As Christians we need not be afraid of the mystic depth of our future existence manifesting itself through spiritual light that shines through the material world we live in. This is a blessedly recurring gift from Heaven that keeps our hearts burning for the final consummation of our relationship with our Lord and Savior. It is designed to be experienced without fear, and is best received with thanksgiving to Him who gave it.