I woke this morning to a scene from Disney.

Looking out the window, with my coffee perking in the background, God blessed me with fabulous scene. A pregnant doe, lying on the ground to rest her weary legs, was peacefully grazing on our lawn. (Echoes of gentle Faline.)

As if that vision were not spectacular enough, a few yards to her side a small bunny hopped about, nibbling on the same grass. (We seeded our lawn with clover to provide a welcoming meal for just such visitors.) The rabbit was alone, although we watched it frolic with its siblings just the other day. (Might they be the children of carefree Thumper?)

Completing the scene were a bevy robins and sparrows. They hopped around the pair, in a wonderful display of original nature’s harmony, which will one day be restored.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

   and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

   and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze;

   their young shall lie down together;

   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

                     Isaiah 11:6-7, ESV

The Creator of Narnia understood the essence of this peace as well as anyone. C.S. Lewis revealed that just as nature was created at peace, so too the new creation would mark a restoration of that purity. As Lewis writes in Miracles, Nature “is to be redeemed. The ‘vanity’ to
which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cured, but cured in character: not tamed (Heaven forbid) . . .”

For the present time, however, we must be content to appreciate brief glimpses of that promise . . . just as I am now, as I write. (Yes, the doe is still resting mere feet from my window.)

Precious moments like this are something to be savored. A sweet foretaste of the feast to come.

_____

The full context of Lewis’ words from Miracles follows. In this passage he warns us not to worship what is created, but only its Creator.

You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see . . . this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads.

How could you ever have thought that this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt. Meet her and know her. If we are immortal, and if she is doomed (as the scientists tell us) to run down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this hoyden, this incorrigible fairy, this dumb witch.

But the theologians tell us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The “vanity” to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cured, but cured in character: not tamed (Heaven forbid) nor sterilised. We shall still be able to recognise our old enemy, friend, play-fellow and foster-mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting.