Then two wonders happened at the same
moment. One was that the Voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices
than you could possibly count. The second wonder was that the blackness
overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. The new stars and the new voices
began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, you would have
felt certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it
was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them
sing.
The eastern sky changed from white to pink
and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking
with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had
yet produced, the sun arose. The earth was of many colors; they were fresh, hot
and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and
then you forgot everything else.
It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright, it
stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about
three hundred yards away."That scene by the brilliant C.S. Lewis in his book, "The Magician's Nephew", from the first in the Chronicles of Narnia, is one of my favourite passages in the series so far. It's Aslan pacing around an empty world and slowly creating Narnia using a song out of his mouth.
On Friday past, I e-mailed over to Sao Paulo my application to volunteer officially with ABBA. They offered six different options for the kind of volunteer work I could do when I'm there, the first being the option of serving at Casa Elohim with street kids brought in off the street into a safe home where they are introduced to family life, and two of the others that I applied for as secondary options are both prevention projects to keep families, and especially kids aware of the dangers of the street. I've had a lot of discussions with my friends over in Brazil, and been asking them everything I can about the worries, the dangers, and any helpful tips that they can give me as I keep preparing as thoroughly as I can for this new world adventure.
I have never visited South America, and know even less about Brazil, which makes it quite exciting as I feel very much like there really is this new world that has been empty in my knowledge and Aslan is walking about creating it, slowly, with every special addition of information to my imagination.
I hope we never reach a place in life where we settle for the environment that has been created around us. I hope that we always pursue new adventures, trying to create a stronger character within us, knowing that what is around us is a product of what we deem as acceptable. Let us reawaken our imaginations to help sing out a world that we want to be proud of, and one that is closer to the world intended by Aslan in His beginning of it all. Thanks for walking this road with me. :)