Author’s note: I mentioned on Sunday that the sermon illustration was taken from an article I had written. Today, I’m sharing the article, which moves in a somewhat different direction than the sermon. It’s a little longer than a typical blog post, but I hope you’ll enjoy it! -Charley

I’ve been to Disney World twice as a kid, and three times as an adult.

I’d go back tomorrow if I could. The Magic Kingdom is an all-ages Paradise. Not in the sense of freedom from toil or pain, but more in the way it offers moments of innocence and magic. And the place that evokes the lost Garden of Eden best in the whole network of parks, as far as I’m concerned, is Tom Sawyer Island.

Honestly, there’s not much to it. Tom Sawyer Island is a manufactured land feature along the Frontierland Rivers of America. This attraction recreates scenes emblematic of the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn novels by Mark Twain. It’s fourteen acres of wooded land, and the only way for guests to get on the island is via a small fleet of gas-powered rafts that emit choking blue smoke that will turn the stomach of anyone who just survived a ride on Big Thunder Mountain. Cast members corral you on with rope barriers, ferry you across, and remind you that they are the only way on and off the island.

Once there, you are free to explore open spaces, cave systems, bridges, and buildings.

You can explore Fort Langhorne, a log fort with guns anchored in the towers. You can look through the window and “shoot” and it makes a classic movie firing sound. K-chow! The fort has a few displays inside and even a secret passage so you can escape if the fort is overrun, by, ahem… “natives.”

There are caves feature glittering jewels, and haphazard, uneven floors that make for ironic falling hazards. They smell musty and dank, like caves! There’s a mill with a waterwheel, a barrel bridge where you can sprain your ankles, lots of winding trails with underbrush to trip on, and heights to fall from and water to fall into. Honestly, I’m shocked it’s not been shut down already. It’s the most dangerous part of the entire Magic Kingdom. I’ve never gotten a scratch on Space Mountain or the Tower of Terror, but I’ve banged my head in the Dead Man’s Grotto Cave almost every time I’ve been there.

However, more than anywhere else at DisneyWorld, there’s no waiting: no lines, no nothing once you’re on the island. Kids (and adults) can run around, blow off steam, and let their imaginations run…wild.

It’s heavenly.

I feel like a kid every time I ever set foot on that dusty ground, arriving with a gas-smoke nausea headache and a yearning to walk the very paths where Tom and Huck had their adventures. It’s the most magical part of The Happiest Place on Earth.

My parents have photos of two-year-old me toddling across a bridge on Tom Sawyer Island in 1973, the year it opened. I have newer photos of my wife and I there, and then of us with our kids, loving the open-air, rustic fun of it all. And nothing made me happier than watching them, my daughters and son, running the paths, grabbing the guns at the fort, and taking pot shots across the river.

Is this what God felt watching Adam and Eve walking around Eden? “Someday, kids, this will all be yours.”

But it won’t. This year, Tom Sawyer Island is closing to make way for Cars Land, a themed area focused on the Pixar film Cars.

I get it.

No one reads Tom Sawyer anymore. It’s relegated to the purgatory of problematic literature. On the other hand, ask anyone under thirty if they’ve seen the movie Cars, and they have. Multiple times. It’s part of the culture now, and it’s enduring and relevant. It has good themes: identity, and effort, and practice and humility. But the only way to get to Cars Land is by tearing down the paradise of Tom Sawyer Island, and I will miss the old land dearly.

That’s what always happens. Time moves on. We can’t stay in The Garden forever. Eventually someone gets wise and eats the fruit and a barrier goes up and you can never go back. It’s not anyone’s fault, really, that time moves on and that change is the only constant. But it hurts. And that hurt is a dull ache, a longing, and a wish for return that you never really get over.

I was there a year ago. I walked the island with teenagers and watched them go from sullen and complaining to puckish and delighted as we visited the Dead Man’s Grotto and Fort Langhorne one more time. Would I have done anything different, if I’d known it would be my last time to set foot on Tom Sawyer Island? Nope. It was perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Come to think of it, Fort Langhorne wasn’t always Fort Langhorne.

I remember earlier visits before 1996. Back then it was Fort Sam Clemens. Things I thought would never change have been changing right under my nose for a long, long time. Why’d it change? In 1996, a new film, Disney’s Tom and Huck, featured a Fort Langhorne. An update made the old fort a touchstone for modern film fans.

So, history will repeat itself, and we’ll lose something. And someday, decades from now, someone new will find out that Cars Land is being replaced by a newer area from a newer Disney movie, and they can plunk down with a yellow legal pad and a pencil and draft this essay over again.

I won’t live to see it, but I hope I can whisper in their ear and remind them that real paradise isn’t ever really lost. You walked its paths. For a time, you breathed its air. You lived it.

It lives in you now.