BP 175
“I remember the loud cheers from the crowd dressed in all white, the sound of the volleyball hitting the court, and the referees blowing their whistles. The arena was so big and super bright, and excitement filled the air. Emotionally, this memory is full of happiness, relief, and a sense of achievement. We were so happy when the last kill touched the ground, and we realized we had won the championship, and I felt a rush of excitement and energy. We did a dog pile in the middle of the court, hugging each other, crying, laughing, soaking it all in. We never wanted it to end. I took a second to look around and take it all in. The powerful mix of the sights, sounds, and emotions of that moment imprinted this memory in my mind.”
These are the words of Avery, a young woman whose high school team won the state volleyball championship game a year ago. She is describing an event that is electric in intensity, high in emotion, a magical moment that elevates itself above the usual flow of time.
Have you ever experienced a magical moment?
A young man I was speaking with the other day, Dane, described a totally different type of magic. He said that ever since he was a teenager, whenever he is at the mall, or on the university campus, or at a work event, he will automatically scan the crowd around him. His mission is always the same: he is looking for a woman whose physical beauty, charisma, and smiling face will stir excitement within him.
He made a point to clarify that at these times he is not motivated by lust but by a desire to feel the warmth of some type of presence that is difficult to describe. He said that if the woman sees him and receives his overtures, the experience is magical for him. He feels so valued to have the object of his attention drawn to him as he is to her.
The only problem for Dane is that the excitement of this opposite gender idealization eventually wanes. It runs its course and slowly degrades from magic to mundane. Avery, whose team won the state championship also commented, “With time, some small details might start to fade or get mixed up with other memories, which is normal. I also think that because there were so many emotions and everything happened very fast, some insignificant details were missed.”
Magic doesn’t last. It slips through our fingers, and we lose it.
I believe there are many magical moments in life when we experience an enthrallment that lifts us out of boredom, mundaneness–out of the monotony of ordinary life. Magical moments even quite secular in nature can make us feel like there is something behind the curtain of the universe that is more than what we normally experience on this side of it.
What are some other examples of magical moments? Let’s make a short list.
- Possibly the female counterpart to Dane’s magical feelings around an attractive female is romance. Let’s face it, Hallmark movies have some type of draw (primarily for females). What is that magic? I think it is a woman being chosen by a man. Maybe similar to Dane (similar to men in general?), there seems to exist in women a desire to be seen, to be loved, to be special, to be Number One to someone. Thus, the moment that all Hallmark movies eventually get to is The Kiss. The Kiss is that magical moment when, against all odds, the man and the woman surmount the final obstacle that has risen up against their mutual love and they finally share their love with each other.
- Some people experience sex (foreplay, intercourse, masturbation) as the moment of magic that makes life worth living.
- Nature can be a magical place for people as they explore the beauty of a forest, climb a majestic mountain, or walk along the beach and listen to the waves pounding against the seashore. Gazing at the awesomely huge universe through a telescope can also be a magical moment when the viewer experiences a taste of the size of space. I even find magic when I see the bright rays of the sun shining through the beauty of vivid yellow and red leaves setting them on fire.
- Listening to music or getting deeply immersed in a movie or book can transport us into a world of magic for a short season.
- Odd to some people, certain individuals have experienced something highly unusual when they have been in the room with a dying person as they transition from this world to the next. Eternity seems to be more accessible for a short time. It is as if heaven opens for the dying person and those around the death bed sense that they have five toes in eternity. They are transported into another world during the dying hour but then also experience a lingering after-effect where they feel that the current world should stop and experience with them the magical intermingling of eternity and temporality.
- Sometimes traveling to another part of the world can awaken the sense of magic within a person. You might feel it when you step off the plane and feel a wave of exotic newness. You might feel it when you travel around the unfamiliar landscape and behold amazing sights. Or you might feel the magic when your plane touches down back in your home country and you drive home and walk in the door. It is then that you pause and think, Did I actually leave home? Was I really in another part of the world for two weeks? I was magically there for a while and now I am magically home. I feel different. I am there and I am here—another experience when one foot is in this world and the other foot in another country.
- Children seem to experience magic more than most adults. Little kids have magical moments every day when they observe new things like a dog or a train or a plane or they taste new foods like fish and ice cream and barbeque sauce. Christmas seems to uniquely stir a sense of magic in a child’s heart. Christmas movies like The Polar Express arouse the magic of the god-like figure of Santa Claus in the minds and hearts of children. In Polar Express, Santa is indeed portrayed as a god who is worshipped by his elves (angels) and lives in a far-off land known as the North Pole. The whole movie documents the sense of magic that children experience when they are young but eventually lose as they age and become more sensible and grounded in the real world.
So, what do we do with these magical moments that are amazing but fleeting, that transport us briefly above and beyond the ordinariness of this world and fill us with wonder and ecstasy? Are they simply shimmering illusions that tease us that something lives behind the curtain but in the end are nothing but lies and sleights of hand?
C.S. Lewis speaks of a different kind of magic in his sermon, The Weight of Glory. He says that we are made for heaven and so we will naturally have a hard-wired desire for something beyond this world. Objects and experiences in this world will awaken and arouse the desire for our true home but “must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy.
“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country . . . I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence . . . the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. . . .
“And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. . . .
“Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is not mere neurotic fantasy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”
Lewis is telling us that the magical moments we experience in this world are not the object we desire most deeply but that these moments certainly arouse our most intense longings. Feminine beauty, romance, sex, winning state championships, the beauty of nature, being in the presence of someone going from earth to heaven, being in a massive crowd at a concert, enjoying the magical moments of childhood—all these awaken eternity in our hearts and point to something beyond this world that will satisfy our deepest desire.
Lewis says that our desire is for heaven. But then he goes on to say that there is another desire, namely, to be noticed by God, seen by Him, glorified by Him. I must agree. Heaven is an amazing desire we all have, but to be in Jesus’ presence is what we hunger for the most. We don’t want a place as much as we hunger for a relationship, an intimacy, a oneness with our Designer and Creator and Friend–in the next world but just as much in this current reality.
So, don’t ignore magical moments. But neither worship them as the object your soul longs to worship. Magical experiences simply awaken your soul and point to something far deeper within you, namely, a hard-wired hunger to be in the Presence of Him who loved you so much that He made you, died for you, and now is your Savior and closest friend.
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” ~ Colossians 3:1-4
“We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
