Are You on the Bus?

3 March 2026  Isaiah 1:10, 16-20

Tuesday of the Second Week in Lent

“…but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 1:20) 

We often think that God deals with us differently depending on how we respond to divine grace, but we have that exactly backwards. Our response to divine grace doesn’t change God – it changes us. “For I am the Lord your God, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob” (Malachi 3:6). What we call the “wrath of God” is not God being different – His appeal to us is always love, for that is all God is (cf. I John 4:8). If we experience love as wrath, it is because we are different, less by far than we would be in the hands of divine mercy.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce souls from hell are permitted to take a bus ride to heaven, and they are allowed to stay if they want. What they experience in heaven, however is not at all pleasant at first.

“Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?”

They find heaven to be a much more substantial place than they had realized, far brighter and firmer. They, by comparison, were phantoms, “man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air” (p. 20). They were so flimsy and unsubstantial that their feet couldn’t bend the blades of grass, and leaves on the ground were heavy as sacks of coal. Just walking on that lawn was like walking on a carpet of spears. The problem wasn’t heaven – heaven was being what heaven has always been. The problem was the visitors – there wasn’t enough of heaven in them. They would have to acquire more heaven in order to stay, but that choice was always theirs to make.

Heaven will be what heaven has always been – it can’t be anything else and still be heaven. We are the ones who have to change: “Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?” (p. 39).

Will you come?

We flatter ourselves sometimes, imagining that our pains, struggles and sorrows are evidence that we are dealing with the “real world,” while religious people are indulging childish fantasies about angels and friends in heaven. The sword consumes them (Isaiah 1:20) the way blades of grass feel like spears to those who are not real enough. What the Bible means by “divine grace” is the life of God; and what the Bible means by the “life of God” is heaven, the most permanent substance, the most radiant beauty, from which all other beauty comes. Our problem is not what we superciliously call the “real world.” Our problem is that there is not enough of the really real world in us. And that is only because we have not chosen it. God is never different; but we can be, provided we choose something else.

The really real world never changes – it can’t. If it were to change, it would only be less, and so less real, less really heaven. It’s appeal is always the same: “Will you come?”

Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows, to people whose “real world” is the actual fantasy. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Will you come?