R6P2D27/28 - Speaking through Lewis

February 8, 2013

R6 (Round 6), P2 (Phase 2), Very Low Calorie Day (VLCD) 27 of 28

I have had a devotional book on my desk at work for the past 2 years (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, and Jesus Calling). This year, I'm re-reading a book I got for Christmas one year from Linda and John ... "A Year with C.S. Lewis, daily reading from his classic works." I read it in 2005, and now, 8 years later, I am dusting it off again. It's profound. I have (and have read) every scrap of writing from Mr. Lewis, but, there's something fun about opening these pages and having something from Screwtape pop up one day, and Mere Christianity the next.

Today, I don't have much else to say besides passing along two very splendid things I read in the last two days by C.S. Lewis, who is, without a doubt, my most favorite of favorite authors (not counting God, of course).  I think Lewis was divinely inspired to uncover some of the hard-to-understand truths about faith in God, and he uncovers them with words.  I can't wait to meet Mr. Lewis someday.  I hope you'll be with me, too.

"Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live ... in the Body of Christ, we step outside that world which says, 'I am as good as you.'  It's like turning from a march to a dance ... We become, as Chesteron said, taller when we bow."  C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory."

Here's another one.  This is from Mere Christianity (this is a WONDERFUL explanation about what the Trinity is, how to understand it, and, frankly, an answer to the question from non-believing intellectuals, "How can an intelligent person can believe in such rubbish?"):

"The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person.  I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus.  You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the 'spirit' of that family, or club, or trade union.  They talk about its 'spirit' because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart.  It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence.  Of course, it is not a real person:  it is only rather like a person.  But that is just one of the differences between God and us.  What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.

This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the 'spirit' of God.  Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind that the other two.  I think there is a reason why it must be so.  In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him.  He is always acting through you.  If you think of the Father as something 'out there,' in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you.  Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backwards.  God is love, and that love works through men -- especially through the whole community of Christians.  But this spirit of love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and the Son."