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Archive for July, 2014

On Kindness  

Posted in Uncategorized on July 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. For about a hundred years we have so concentrated on one of the virtues—“kindness” or mercy—that most of us do not feel anything except kindness to be really good or anything but cruelty to be really bad. Such lopsided ethical developments are not uncommon, and other ages too have had their pet virtues and curious insensibilities. And if one virtue must be cultivated at the expense of all the rest, none has a higher claim than mercy. The real trouble is that “kindness” is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds.
Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that “his heart’s in the right place” and “he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.
You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbor’s welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty.
The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

Kindness is more active than passive; more actions than states of being. It is more forgiving than tolerating; helpful than sympathetic; it is doing, saying or thinking good things that helps someone or does them some good.
 
As has often been said , “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing”. 
 
Do something good for others by showing, giving and sharing kindness. You will prevail against evil and replace it with mercy and grace, which is true kindness in action.
 
Kindness anyone?
Z gardener

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On Their Being No Ordinary People

Posted in Uncategorized on July 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. 
 
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. 
 
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
 
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

Christ did say that which we did to the least of his was done to him. Truly, each human is a child of God with infinite capability for good and bad. That which we do to, or for, our brothers and sisters is the way we treat God. When we treat them as children of God, we fulfill our role as God’s children and demonstrate our reverence to God and love for his other children.
 
Un-ordinarily yours,
Z gardener

 

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On The Right To Choose

Posted in Uncategorized on July 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

At the moment the really important thing seems to be that you were brought to realize the impossibility (strict sense) of rejecting Christ. Of course He must often seem to us to be playing fast and loose with us. The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs.
Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything. You are so sure you know what the promise promised! And the danger is that when what He means by ‘win’ appears, you will ignore it because it is not what you thought it would be—as He Himself was rejected because He was not like the Messiah the Jews had in mind.
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
One of the hardest, if not the hardest thing a Christian must do is surrender their will and plans to God. It is the antithesis of what we perceive is our “right” to call our own shots.
 
We do have that “right”, and so did Adam. However, when our “right to chose” blocks us from God’s will and God’s way, then we may refuse to see it or accept it. Thus, we may desire and choose the life we planned rather than the one God created us to live.
 
That is the choice Adam made; not living in the Eden God created, but in the world he wanted. That world will never provide us the peace, love, joy and hope that Eden was created for us to enjoy here and now.
 
Choosing God’s way,
Z gardener

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Coming In Out Of The Wind

Posted in Uncategorized on July 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.
 
We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. 
 
He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible. 
 
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
 
Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

And while it is an “all in” deal with our faith, all along the way we are provided with what we need to stay “all in” at that time.
 
We may not get the big picture all at once, but we will see enough to keep going and find our way. We may get knocked down and knocked out, but we will be revived and be helped up to a better place each time we fall.
 
And while our lives may rush at us like a storm the moment we open our eyes, peace and quiet will be ours when we come in out of that wind, listen to that other quiet voice and rest in the peace and quiet of God’s sure love and protection.
 
Coming in,
Z gardener 

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On Heaven

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

No, I don’t wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven.
 
 
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
 

Heaven and God are more wonderful than we can possibly imagine. Any attempt to quantify, or even effectively describe them in human terms, will fall short. Yet, that which we can experience of God and heaven here below are greater than anything else we can experience. And once experienced, will ever draw us toward it. When we respond to that call, then all the joy, peace, hope and love possible become available to us here and now. That is how we experience God and heaven now, and how we prepare for the unimaginable experience of being with God in heaven forever.

 
Responding to the call,
Z gardener

 

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On God

Posted in Uncategorized on July 2, 2014| Leave a Comment »

On God
 
It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. “Look out!” we cry, “it’s alive.” And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back—I would have done so myself if I could—and proceed no further with Christianity. An “impersonal God”—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life- force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all.
 
But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“Man’s search for God”!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us!
 
From Miracles
Compiled in Words to Live By
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

When Moses gave his people the opportunity to see Good face to face, they hid their eyes in terror. They begged Moses to talk directly to God and to never ask them to do that again. Make no mistake, that which we seek in Christianity is infinitely more than we can imagine.
 
We only experience a form of knowing God here below, except when we turn ourselves over to God and his will for us. Then we more fully experience knowing God. But be warned, your life will be forever transformed and truth will reveal many things that can be extremely hard to face and harder to accept. Think about Mary and how knowing God confronted her with many hard to accept truths, and how it changed her life…and the world.
 
However, this is the only path to knowing God, true existence and becoming the child of God we were created to be. As May West said, “I didn’t say it would be easy…I said it would be worth it”.
 
Facing God,
Z gardener

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On Real Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

What man, in his natural condition, does not have, is Spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word life for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the ‘greatness’ of space and the ‘greatness’ of God were the same sort of greatness. In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. 
 
The Biological life is Bios which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. 
 
Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
 
And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.
 
Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

Let us come to spiritual life each day so that our biological life will come to reflect it. That is how we experience the love, peace, joy, hope and beauty of the garden God gave us here and now. That is also how we prepare ourselves here and now for eternal spiritual life forever with God.
 
In the spirit,
Z Gardener 

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