Welcome to “Further Up, Further In”
the blog site penned by Holly MacDonald Younghans, MDiv.
“What’s with the name” you ask? Let me tell you.
I am a hardcore Chronicles of Narnia nerd! I started reading those books as a young person of maybe nine or ten and I have never stopped. I read them almost annually. I have them in audio format (the best is the one produced by Focus on the Family) and listen to them regularly. There is so much rich truth in these children’s stories, and I am both reminded of those I’ve forgotten and/or discover new nuggets to chew on.
Spoiler alert: if you have not read them and would like to, STOP NOW and read this intro some other day.
The last book has all the characters you have come to love coming together in what is Lewis’ version of a new and better, never-ending Narnia, and it goes on forever and ever. One of the common cries of encouragement that begins to be repeated by various characters is, “Come further up! Come further in!” or variations on that theme.
It is a cry to come and experience the “more” that Aslan has for all of them. Forever.
The image I chose is an artistic rendering of the stable door through which those who are alive in the world at the time it comes to an end, pass through to enter this New Narnia. It is one thing on one side and quite another on the other side. As Queen Lucy observes, “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world” (Lewis, The Last Battle).
The blog’s byline, “Exhortation and encouragement for followers of The Way” is meant to clarify who these posts are meant for and what I hope they will accomplish. Enter, and come further up and further in!