What Anne of Green Gables and John Both Taught Me

I've read Anne of Green Gables a couple times.

All right. A lot of times.

Okay. Fine. I've read every single Anne book. All eight of them. At least eight times apiece. I'm not even kidding. It's probably been more than that...

All that to say, I can quote them, I could perform a dramatic reading, and I have cried every single time I get to certain chapters.

There's one chapter, in Anne of the Island which has always stuck in my mind. It's the one chapter that makes me cry every time. I even know that it's coming (obviously), and I mentally prep myself, "I am not going to cry. This is fiction. I will not cry."

And then I turn into a blubbering mess and cry my eyes out.

In this chapter, Anne goes to visit one of her life-long friends, Ruby, who is dying. The friend is in staunch denial of her imminent death, until one, perfect, moonlit night, she turns to Anne and in tears breaks down, terrified of death. And the reason? She says heaven is "not what I'm used to."

Montgomery then writes: “All that Ruby said was so horribly true, she was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only. She had lived solely for the little things of life, the things that pass, forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing of one dwelling to the other. From twilight to unclouded day. ...it was no wonder her soul clung in blind helplessness to the only things she knew and loved.” 

This passage haunts me.

What if my life is so incredibly full of stuff that I will be "unused to" the things of heaven. It will still be heaven. It will still be eternal glory with God. But will it taste as sweet if I have not stored up a delight for the things of eternity.

And one early morning, as I was stumbling with bleary eyes through the book of I John, I read the following,

"And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming." (I John 2:28)

And it clicked.

The reason this literary passage always moved me to tears. was because it was rooted in truth. The Bible confirms it (much more succinctly and authoritatively than L.M.Montgomery ever could).

By daily running to God, by daily dwelling, standing, living, lingering, remaining, and accepting who my God is, I'm not just gathering joy here on earth, I'm dressing my soul for heaven. I'm increasing my delight at his coming. I'm erasing the possible fear and shame his coming might bring. So I agree with my fictional heroine and say: "When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different--something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must begin here on earth.”

Because this is just a blink.

Heaven is a glorious forever.