A Better Country Quotes

“No one can live without delight,” writes Peter Kreeft, “and that is why a man, deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasures.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“Actress Winona Ryder, who starred in Beetlejuice, Mermaids, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Little Women thought she had it all. She was famous, making lots of money, and was romantically involved with actor Johnny Depp. But it wasn’t enough. She shared in an interview in October 2000, “When I was 18, I was driving around at two in the morning, completely crying and alone and scared. I drove by this magazine stand that has this Rolling Stone that I was on the cover of, and it said, ‘Winona Ryder: The Luckiest Girl in the World.’ And there I was feeling more alone than I ever had.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“Most of us find it very difficult to want ‘Heaven’ at all,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “except in so far as ‘Heaven’ means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.”15”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“every time he climbed onto the deck, he was expected to perform as well as he had in the Olympics. The pressure almost caused him to leave the sport altogether. He later said, “It’s ironic that all your life you know what you want to be and then you become it and you get all sad and depressed . . . You don’t know why you’re feeling that way. It’s a feeling that comes from nowhere. It seems like a chemical.”12 There are more cases like this, and new ones occur every day. “What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“In an interview on 60 Minutes, Tom Brady, the New England Patriots star quarterback, winner of three Super Bowls before turning thirty, tried to explain what was bothering him. “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there is something greater out there for me? A lot of people would say, ‘This is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream. It’s got to be more than this. I mean, this isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be.”9”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“As a pastor, I have performed many funerals over the years. It is in these tragic moments in peoples’ lives that they most clearly articulate their ideas of heaven. And I learn again and again that the desire for heaven is intense and universal, but our understanding of heaven is weak and muddled.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.7 — C. S. Lewis”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“I’m preparing for heaven. I hope you’ll join me as we go exploring our better country. What we will discover will change your life forever. So let’s begin our journey of discovery together. Let’s go further up and further into . . . the better country.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“In C. S. Lewis’s classic fiction book, The Last Battle, Lewis describes the difference between old Narnia and new Narnia (heaven). The difference between the old Narnia and the New Narnia was like that. The newer one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean. It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: “I have come home at last. This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee—Come further up, come further in.”6”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“We love pictures, descriptions, testimonies from folks who’ve been there, and an idea of what there is to do once we’ve arrived. Without this information our excitement dims considerably, especially when the place we’re thinking about lasts forever.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“How many of us would sign up to visit a resort or vacation destination whose only advertising was “It’s beautiful, just perfect,” but provides us with no details? You have no idea what the resort looks like or what it offers. The ads may say it’s perfect—but perfect for whom? It may indeed be perfect—for hikers—but what if you’re not a hiker? Or it may be perfect for hunters or surfers, but what if you’re neither? What if it’s designed for senior citizens and you’re twenty-something, or for kids and you’re eighty?”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven