Thinking of Madeleine.

Reading the Randy Alcorn tome Heaven lately, and thinking about it a lot during the day, when I'm not zoned in on work. Here's a quote from Jonathan Edwards that I underlined a lot in my copy of Heaven:

"To go to heaven fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, children or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows. But the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean."

And Alcorn adds:

"In Heaven we'll at last be freed of self-righteousness and self-deceit. We'll no longer question God's goodness; we'll see it, savor it, enjoy it, and declare it to our companions. Surely we will wonder how we ever could have doubted His goodness. For then our faith will be sight—we shall see God."

A bit later, answering a question regarding what the New Earth will be like, Mr Alcorn has these thoughts:

"We've never seen men and women as they were intended to be. We've never seen animals the way they were before the Fall. We see only marred remnants of what once was. Likewise, we've never seen nature unchained and undiminished. We've only seen it cursed and decaying. Yet even now we see a great deal that pleases and excites us, moving our hearts to worship.
If the 'wrong side' of Heaven can be so beautiful, what will the right side look like? If the smoking remains are so stunning, what will Earth look like when it's resurrected and made new, restored to the original?
"C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien saw core truth in the old mythologies, and in their books they give us a glimpse of people and beasts and trees that are vibrantly alive. What lies in store for us is what we have seen only in diminished glimpses. As Lewis and Tolkien realized, 'Pagan fables of paradise were dim and distorted recollections of Eden.'"

I would add Madeleine to the list of great storytellers mentioned above, giving us a glimpse into what we can be once we are restored. She saw core truth in our present times, in the lives of children, and in our nature. She is seeing clearly, not through the veil of darkness that Meg and Calvin saw in A Wrinkle in Time. And she, like all of us will be who believe in Christ, has shed both sin and sorrow and can see the face of Jesus.

"...she realized with a fresh shock that it was not Mrs Whatsit herself that she was seeing at all. The complete, the true Mrs Whatsit, Meg realized, was beyond human understanding. What she saw was only the game Mrs Whatsit was playing; it was an amusing and charming game, a game full of both laughter and comfort, but it was only the tiniest facet of all the things Mrs Whatsit could be."
— A Wrinkle In Time