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On Faith

Posted in Uncategorized on August 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off’, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.
 
The first step is to recognize the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?
 
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.
 
Yes, we must feed our faith each day. Without proper care, attention and focus; faith, like every human activity, will wither and fade. It is the nature of the universe, and that is good. For if we could set our faith on auto pilot, it would not require our conscious participation, That would leave out human will and that is not good.
 
You see, we must choose God and good. Neither is possible without our consent. So today, let us act, think and feel our faith, so it is as alive as we are.
 
Choosing God,
Z gardener

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On The Holy Spirit

Posted in Uncategorized on August 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

It is quite right that you should feel that “something terrific” has happened to you (It has) and be “all glowy.” Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. 

The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. 

But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Words to Live By

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. 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.

Just as “falling in love” produces such wonderful and beautiful feelings, the glow of new spiritual life is sublimely enchanting as it should be. And just a real love is the product of first love, so is the gift of the Holy Spirit the product of being reborn. It is new life and light in all its glory and it is to be fully experienced.

It is not the thing however, but just the experience of it entering our lives; the rush of sensory perception accompanying  the Holy Spirit. The thing itself is the “still small voice” that abides in us; not the sound and the fury accompanying Him, but His actual voice itself that whispers righteousness to us. It is the whisper of our Father guiding us to our destiny as children of God.

“Then He said, ‘Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.’ And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:11-12)

Leaning in and listening to God,

Z gardener

Author’s note: Another new gardener is blessing us with his presence in the garden today. He is a long time friend, devoted husband and father who is courageously facing his life with a determination to hear and follow the “still small voice”. Proud of you brother and welcome to the garden. SF

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On Holiness

Posted in Uncategorized on August 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death.
 
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.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.

 

Without God, we are lost. With God we are perfected. 
 
Yes, it will take all of this life and some of the next to fully manifest our status as children of God. However, the outcome is certain if we stay the path. If we do stay on course we will be able to say each day. “I am better today than yesterday, but not as good as I will be tomorrow.”
 
Seeking holiness each day,
Z gardener
 
Author’s note: Today we are blessed by the presence of a new gardener. He runs a major company and conducts his life in accordance with God’s will. Welcome to the garden brother.
 
Blessings,
Z

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On Being God’s House

Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.
 
But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
 
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.

 

How hard it may seem to turn your house over to someone else to rearrange as they choose. But that is exactly what we do when we accept God’s call. We turn our lives over to his will so that we may be remade according to God’s plan. As difficult as this may seem, the reward is to discover how to live in the Eden we were given here, and to receive the eternal birthright of those reborn as God’s children.
 
Knowing this, let us all say, “Come into my house, Lord and make me into your temple”.
 
Being God’s,
Z gardener

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On Heaven

Posted in Uncategorized on July 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness; but your darkness cannot now infect our light. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?
The Great Divorce. Copyright © 1946, C. S Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed 1973 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.
It is impossible for darkness to overcome or infect light  because darkness is the absence of light. It can not exist where there is light. In fact, darkness does not “exist” at all, except as the lack of something; light.
 
Now joy, smiles, love and all that “exists'” in our light will also never be overcome except in their absence. So, brothers and sisters, express the light that exists in you; and thereby conquer, banish, dispel and dispense that darkness in this world that can only fill the void of light left unexpressed or un-demonstrated by us, here below.. 
 
When you do “let your light shine” it will illuminate the Garden called Eden that God created us to inhabit, and therein we will experience the true reality revealed by that light, “on earth as it is in Heaven”.
 
Shine on, you crazy diamond,
 
Stan

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On Grieving The Death Of A Loved One

Posted in Uncategorized on July 24, 2014| Leave a Comment »

And then one or other dies. And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off—something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape. I wonder. If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure. 
 
We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ by the loved one while she is here. Then comes the tragic figure of the dance in which we must learn to be still taken out of ourselves though the bodily presence is withdrawn, to love the very Her, and not fall back to loving our past, or our memory, or our sorrow, or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.
 
A Grief Observed. Copyright © 1961 by N. W. Clerk, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Preface by Douglas H. Gresham copyright © 1994 by Douglas H. Gresham. 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.

Just as there can be no human life without birth, there is can be no human life without death. The good news here is that God has given us a path to overcome our own death through our faith. God also provides a way for us to deal with the loss of those we love who die. We are to pray for them and keep them in our hearts just as when they were here with us. Also, God provides us the hope of reunion with them in joy and peace everlasting. Until that time, we must endure the reality of physical separation by communing with them in spirit.

 
Until then,
Z gardener 

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On Pretending To Be A Child Of God

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children’s games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown-ups—playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretense of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.
 
Now, the moment you realize ‘Here I am, dressing up as Christ,’ it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality. You will find several things going on in your mind which would not be going on there if you were really a son of God. Well, stop them. Or you may realize that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash- up. Well, go and do it.
 
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.

 

 
 
One of this scribe’s best friends and mentors used to say, “fake it, ’til you make it”. Lewis offers a slightly different twist today. It almost like he is saying, “make it while you fake it”. In other words, we should make our reality fit a child of god, while growing into our destiny as that child.
 
If we act as if we are children of God, we will become the children that God the creator intended us to be. As within, so without.
 
Making it,
Z gardener

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On Falling

Posted in Uncategorized on July 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »

No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking our- selves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, & the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 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.

In order to properly pick ourselves, we must try to understand how and why we fell; learn from the fall and turn away from that which tripped us. It is in this falling and getting up that we fully experience human existence. It is also when we truly experience spiritual existence and communion with God. Verily, if humans could live without falling, we would likely think we had no need for God. 

 
Falling up,
Z gardener

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On Morality

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 
 
I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. 
 
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.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.

Think about that! They are too busy looking at the source from which goodness comes. That is our great challenge; to focus on God instead of ourselves and our reactions to God. First we must come to God and then must make God the focus upon which we concentrate. “Come to me, ye who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest”. This does not say a word about our personal morality or guilt. It says to focus on God and turn to God for our peace and for our goodness.

 
Turning to God,
Z gardener

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On Being Ourselves

Posted in Uncategorized on July 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 
 
Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run. Or look at it this way. In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest thing to do. If you funk it, you will find yourself, hours later, in far worse danger. The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.
 
It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves’, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way — centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.
 
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.

There are no shortcuts to living in Eden here or Heaven above. We must give our will, desires, fears and hopes to God. if we do, we can not fail. If we do not, we can not succeed spiritually. Simple, yet hard. But it is the easiest way in the end. Remember that Jesus said ” My yoke is easy and my burden is light”.

 
Taking his yoke,
Z gardener

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