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Let’s Escape This Life for a Day

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Friday 5 September 2025 at 15:13

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Let’s Escape This Life for a Day

In 1999, I lived for a time in Stavanger, Norway. Most mornings, leaving Randaberg and heading into the city, I stopped at a filling station for a freshly made skolebolle—a school bun. I can still taste the custard, coconut, and sweetness. I miss them still.

Sometimes, in the private cinema of my imagination, I step into a time machine and escape this life for a single day. Don’t tell me you’ve never entertained the thought. One press of a button and I’m in a 17th-century Japanese village, mist curling like silk above the paddies, sandals shuffling across the earth. Another press and I’m wandering an Indian night market, the air alive with cumin and cardamom, the chatter of merchants and buyers weaving a living symphony. Or perhaps I’d go further still—away from humanity altogether—and find myself alone in the Rockies, a bag of skoleboller somehow beamed away while the coffee brewed. I’d pitch my tent beneath a midnight sky brimming with stars and listen to a silence so complete it feels as though the earth itself is holding its breath.

But then the dream fades. I blink, and here I am—back in Scotland on a Saturday evening. Nothing extraordinary. Just reality humming along.

And in those quiet returns, the questions arrive. What’s it all about? Why are we here at all? Are we only a passing arrangement of atoms—chance evolution—replicating ourselves until we vanish? Some are content with that explanation. I’m not. Because the world does not behave as though it’s meaningless.

Think about it. Flowers bloom in colours that surpass function. Birds sing songs more elaborate than survival requires. We, too, hunger for what is unnecessary. We write poetry. We compose music. We fall in love with paintings, with stories, with the way sunlight filters through a late-afternoon window. None of this is needed to stay alive. Yet without it, are we truly living? The unnecessary becomes essential.

And then there’s time. We grow older. Doors begin to close one by one. Torschlusspanik, the Germans call it—the panic of gates shutting as opportunities slip away. Suddenly, we cling to life with a desperation we never knew was in us. Few are ready to say, “Tomorrow is enough.” We bargain for more time, more seasons, more chances. Why? Because something deep within whispers that life ought not to end.

My sister once spoke with an old man who stood weeping at the sight of the countryside. When she asked if he was alright, he said, “I see all this beauty, and I don’t have much longer to live. But I want to stay.” His tears were the language of eternity. He wanted more not because he was greedy, but because he was human.

The writer of Ecclesiastes put it plainly: God has “set eternity in the human heart.” That single thought explains much of our restless longing. It explains why sunsets undo us, why we fear the final curtain, why we ask questions that biology cannot satisfy. It tells us that our hunger for permanence is not a flaw but a clue.

The Garden of Eden was a template for what the whole earth was meant to be. Our first parents were told to spread out and cultivate the land. Imagine it—the whole earth filled with Rockies, Japanese gardens, skoleboller, and the rich delights of every age and culture. And here is the point: with eternity in your lap, there is no need to beam about. There is no hurry. Build a boat, sail to the Orkneys, then to the Faroes, and on to Norway. Ride a horse to Stavanger. Kult! as the Norwegians say.

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
— Luke 23:43 (NIV)

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Jim McCrory

Why Are We Here? Let's Escape This World For a Moment

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday 28 August 2025 at 12:50

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Let’s Escape this Life for a Day | learn1

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…” 

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Jim McCrory

The Secret Kept in Children's Books and Picturebooks

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Monday 26 August 2024 at 11:13

"“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis


Image by https://unsplash.com/@matblueforest

I have an embarrassing  secret. I am happy to tell you what it is so long as you don’t tell anyone. Is that a deal? This is my secret. I love children’s books. At my age I should know better, but it's an addiction . I love them so much that I changed my degree from a Literature Degree to an Open Degree to accommodate EA300 Children’s Literature with The Open University.

Gyo Fujikawa is the most addictive for me. Children in paradise. Waving from tree houses. Gentle fairies and children no bigger than polka-dot toadstools. Captivating. But, there's the loneliness of the child with no one to play with except a frog. That saddens me. I was a lonely child and I empathise. 

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-gyo-fujikawa-drew-freedom-in-childrens-books

Then there’s Astrid Lindgren’s The Children of Noisy Village. I’m a Swedophile who can speak a few words of Swedish and I am in awe of the beauty and setting where the tale is filmed. An age of innocence. Swedish village life that will never return, perhaps.

https://tv.apple.com/no/movie/the-children-of-noisy-village/umc.cmc.13bmjs0xgg1sv8sju2tv3za5j

There’s the Portuguese word that best explains my longing to enter a world that these stories encapsulate, Saudade,  a longing or nostalgia for something that cannot be realised.

I guess the reason such stories appeal is the desire to escape mentally from this broken world. C.S. Lewis wrote:

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

Interesting, but what world did C.S Lewis mean? Did he mean the world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? No, he was a Christian and an academic who wrote children’s books, Christian, apologetic and academic books. The world he was thinking of was the world recorded in Luke 23:43 “Truly I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Writing:  © 2024 Jim McCrory


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The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo

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Edited by Jim McCrory, Wednesday 17 July 2024 at 12:21


Image of Bran, Romania, by Calin Stan at https://unsplash.com/@calinstan


The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo

 

In a recent post, I wrote about a music teacher who changed my life and made me believe that Scandinavia was my real home.

Last night, my wife and I watched a moving documentary on Netflix called The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo.

It told the story of a teenage Chinese boy with a good heart who developed a deep desire to study literature and Romanian language in a Romanian university. His love for the country and nation was inspired by the Romanian national poet, Mihai Eminescu. Yuguo, left an incredible impression on his university teachers and the nation as a whole. Somewhere in the future haven of wonder, I hope I will meet Yuguo. His story among other matters, stand as a testament to the transforming power of literature.

I'm curious about all this; is there a place you always felt you belonged to? Make a comment, please.

*******

 “You may have the universe if I may have Italy”: Giuseppe Verdi

After the documentary, I asked my wife, “Is there a place that draws you and makes you feel you belong there?” She replied, “Italy.”

C.S. Lewis wrote of the emotion that creates a desire to live in another world as a glimpse of a future paradise. He wrote,

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we are made for another world.”

And Jesus said to the repentant criminal, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43 (Legacy Standard Bible).





Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc.  LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.

 

 


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