The world presents us with many options. They sometimes come at us with such velocity and strobing frequency that it can become difficult to fully taste the sweetness and complexities of a ripe life. We live in a phantasmagoria world. Flashing blue screens, startling screens, stories shortened and sped up to an unpleasant, upsetting pace. How did this house of mirrors and strobing lights become home? Chaos has become normalized; we forget how sore our heads are from running into walls. Concussed, we have become like drunken sailors; the pupils of our hearts dilated to a pitch-black; they have forgotten what it is to stare and study. I grieve that my eyes prefer flashes and artificial glow. I’ve traded the brilliance of twilight stars for glow-in-the-dark star celebrities on my TV. I, for one, am tired of all the options. I’m no longer content with being force-fed sporadic light shows on my phone, television, and computer screen. I have found that my feed of tragedies, victories, products, rage bait, discouragements, and hilarity is hardly ever dammed up – it roars down on me like raging white waters swirling, pushing, taking those who enter it further down the river than they ever desired to be. These shifting shadows and fitful feeds have made for a phantasmagoric existence.
Phantasmagoria is my new favorite word. It means a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination. Picture a strobe light, or that Instagram reel whose creator decided to shift from scene to scene like a flipbook animation, a sequence of rapid pictures that hardly tell a true, living story worth living by. This is the same word that C.S. Lewis used to describe his own changeful thoughts, passions, and imaginings in his book A Grief Observed.[1] As finite people, we are ever-changing, and unfortunately for those of us living in the 21st century, we are changing faster than humanity probably ever has. This led me to ask myself this question: What is the scenery I set my gaze on most regularly?
I am not asking, “What is the scenery I most enjoy?” Those two questions are not the same. I can enjoy the company of friends and eagerly desire fellowship with them, yet never decide to do the hard thing: schedule plans with them. I can enjoy working out and going to the gym, but that doesn’t mean I ensure that I do it. I can say I enjoy my children, but if I’d rather stare into my phone's screen than their bright green/brown eyes, then the only person I’m fooling is myself. Just because I enjoy something doesn’t mean I will set my mind to experience what I say I enjoy. We are all setting our gaze on scenery; the question isn’t what scenery we enjoy, but what scenery we come back to most often for the sake of convenience, ease, and pleasantry.
Like a moth, we’re going to be drawn in by some sort of scenic light; the question isn’t, am I going to be drawn in? “ but " What light will I allow to draw me in?” Blue phantasmagoria trapping light that hypnotizes and ends with a strobing pop and a great descent from flight, or the kind that leads to warmth, safety, and enjoyment as we’ve never known?
I want to help you exit the house of mirrors you may be living in today. My desire is to set before you the delight of glory that can wake you from the hypnotic effects of the phantasmagoria you may be living in. Stick with me for just a moment.
I love a good cologne. Have you ever noticed that every perfume and cologne store has a little jar of coffee beans sitting nearby to every bottle of fragrance? Next to every bottle of perfume/cologne, you’ll find a little glass jar of coffee beans, not for brewing coffee, but for resetting the palate of the consumer’s sense of smell. And here’s the thing: You only need a palate cleanser when there are too many things floating around the air we breathe. These palate cleansers are needed when spice begins to confuse with citrus, when floral begins to blend with the sweet smell of lavender, and woody earth is mistaken for the amber warmth of cardamom. Coffee beans help reset the sense of smell so we can actually discern and distinguish what we’re smelling in a room full of hundreds of different fragrances. The Christian life is meant to be one that can sense holy scenery, the scents, the fragrances worth pursuing. But when we feed the senses of our soul with a plethora of everything, our life ends up carrying a scent that doesn’t carry the fragrance of restful worship; it ends up smelling like a musty department store with a bunch of expired Axe body spray – it ends up smelling like everything and nothing at the same time. Sure, there’s fragrance, but we can’t really tell what it is made up of.
The scenery we place ourselves in front of becomes the fragrance we live by. We need a palate cleanser, a change of scenery, a light that drowns out the strobing effects of the world around us. The Psalmist writes, “How sweet are Your words to my taste— sweeter than honey in my mouth! I gain understanding from Your precepts; therefore I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:103-104 BSB) Though we don’t know who wrote Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, we can see that it recognizes the power of God’s words to reset our senses and desires. We must remember that the author who wrote this chapter didn’t have a pint of Ben & Jerry’s at home; they didn’t have a stash of chocolate in their pantry for a hard day, and they didn’t know what a gummy bear was. Raw Honey was the sweetest dessert anyone could experience in ancient Israel. Take note, it’s not just that the words of God are sweet to taste, but they are so sweet they cleanse the palate. To the psalmist, the sweetness of God’s words causes the palate of the soul to quickly recognize Aspartame ways, artificial sweeteners that make for a false way. The phantasmagoria of the world just can’t compete with the raw sweetness of God.
The solution to a phantasmagoric life clouded by every option out there isn’t putting our phone down and doing nothing; it’s putting our phone down, putting away the old fragrances and artificial sweeteners, and experiencing an entirely new change of scenery and sweetness. Oh, that we would cleanse the palate with the scenery and sweetness that our life is bursting forth with! The world is so good at distracting us from what God is up to in our lives. The noise of people chanting, “This will make your life better!” “You’ll never be happy until…”, “Buy this!”, and “Watch that!” need to be turned down if we are to see what God is sweetly sustaining in our lives.
I’d like to propose three solutions to the Phantasmagoric life:
1. Sweet Scripture: First, the scriptures are the palate cleanser that we need. Each day we open the Bible, read it, pray it, and ask God to give us understanding from His word; we breathe in the coffee beans. When we read our Bibles, we are grounded in ancient truth. The fragrances of the times will change and shift, but this fragrance is ancient, true, and never changes. It has the ability to reset a scattered heart. Studies show that when Christians read their Bibles four or more times a week, they see great benefits in almost every aspect of life. Check out the study here: https://www.odbm.org/en/center-for-bible-engagement/blog/bible-engagement-and-the-power-of-4-a-key-to-spiritual-growth
2. Steady Scenery: The more we learn to love being where our feet are, the easier it is to reject the stuff that wants to carry us away into a house of mirrors. My phone is a portal to restless entertainment that wants to tell me there’s something better happening somewhere other than where I am. One of the healthiest things we can do in a digital age is to spend at least one day a week without any digital input. The more I do this, the more I find that I’m able to find God in the eyes of my children, the more I can experience the glory of God dancing with my wife in the kitchen, and the more I can enjoy the scenery that God has placed me in without comparing my scenery to others.
3. Fragrant Worship: “For we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ.” (2 Cor. 2:15) Like the woman who poured the alabaster jar of perfume on Jesus, we are to be a people who know how to love God extravagantly. (Luke 7:37-38) Jesus went to the cross smelling like this woman’s worship, and the woman went home smelling like her King. Living a lifestyle of worship matters, and when we worship well, we carry the fragrance of our King everywhere we go, reminding ourselves and others of the scenery and sweetness we return to so often.
Lewis, C. S. A Grief Observed. Deluxe edition. New York, NY: HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2026. P66-67
