"This life is only a prelude to eternity." CS Lewis wrote about this in the final book of his Narnia series, "The Last Battle." The children are involved in a terrible train wreck and are immediately transported to Narnia. They fear they'll be sent back to earth, but Aslan assures them that they've finally come home.
"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."
And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion, but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has ever read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
From "A Place Called Home," page 24
