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On Hell

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

[The fictional George MacDonald is speaking.]“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. To those who knock, it is opened.”. . .
 
“Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.”. . .
 
“Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste. . . .
“A damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.”
 
“Then no one can ever reach them?”
 
“Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.”
 
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.
 
We create our hell by accepting the false illusion of separation from God and others. It is indeed a state of mind, and that state of mind does not have to wait for death. In fact, it conceived and birthed here below, because it can not exist in heaven, the true reality.
 
So, let us open ourselves to heaven here, so we will have a home and be at home when we fully arrive there forever.
 
Thy will be done, Father,
Z gardener
 

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On Spiritual Troughs

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

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His [the Enemy’s] efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of self-hood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. 
 
One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. 
 
We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
 
The Screwtape Letters. Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 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.
 
According to this week’s Lectionary  bible verse from the book of John (on this the the seventh Sunday of Easter), “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” And, this is exactly how it happens. Like a vacuum, the no-thing attempts take from us and to “suck out” of us while the every-thing (God) wants to give to us and fill us to overflowing.
 
So, give thanks for the highs and the lows in life knowing that even our troughs are places where God’s giving will fill us with what we need to live in our Eden.
 
Being filled,
Z gardener
 
 

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On Glory  

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 30, 2014| Leave a Comment »

[And this brings me to] the other sense of glory—glory as brightness, splendor, luminosity. We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. I think I begin to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. 
 
But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. 
 
They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. 
 
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. 
 
Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.
 
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. 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.
 
And that greater glory, the full communion with God, is prepared in us here below. When we accept that preparation and choose to follow God’s will, we get a taste of glory. That taste of glory is the Eden God created for us in life. However, it is only a taste. The true experience is achieved only on the other side.
 
Tasting for the future,
Z gardener
 

 

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On What We Shall Be

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 28, 2014| 1 Comment »

“We know not what we shall be”; but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape, not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.
 
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 
 
We are now but a mere reflection of our heavenly existence, a three dimensional finite image of an infinite reality; like viewing a three dimensional hologram of something instead of experiencing the actual thing itself.
 
So, when we find heaven, we will not be something else, we will be the ultimate manifestation of us, our best and true self. Then we will be experiencing instead of looking at a reflection of experience.
 
No, our candle will not be dimmer, nor will it be something else. It will become the light so bright that the reality around it is fully illuminated. We will become the light yet will remain the candle. 
 
Becoming the light,
Z gardener
 
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On Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 22, 2014| 1 Comment »

About death, I go through different moods, but the times when I can desire it are never, I think, those when this world seems harshest. On the contrary, it is just when there seems to be most of Heaven already here that I come nearest to longing for the patria. It is the bright frontispiece [which] whets one to read the story itself. All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasis’s our pilgrim status: always reminds, beckons, awakes desire. Our best havings are wantings.
 
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.
 
When we are closest to joy, we are closest to heaven. So, if we truly believe in heaven, we would most want it when we experience the earthly aspects of joy. Death will bring the believer into full joy. Loving life is not mutually exclusive from loving the true joy that is the true source of love and life.
 
Living in and looking for looking for more heaven,
Z gardener
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On Heaven

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The symbols under which Heaven is presented to us are (a) a dinner party, (b) a wedding, (c) a city, and (d) a concert. It would be grotesque to suppose that the guests or citizens or members of the choir didn’t know one another. And how can love of one another be commanded in this life if it is to be cut short at death?
 
Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half- waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming.
 
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.
 
Here is what we can know about heaven. First, we can experience an earthly form of it here and now by seeking and following God’s will. Lastly, we can know that everything that is good, joyful, happy, peaceful and fulfilling will exist there in full, and that all the good things in our earthly life will be there in its truest and best manifestation. As for the details, I can patiently wait and excitedly imagine what joy will be there.
 
Having heaven,
Z gardener
 
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On Desiring Heaven

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. 
 
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. 
 
Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw—but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of—something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side?
 
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. 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.
 
It is this writer’s opinion that all our desires at their base, are really the desire for peace. That secret thread that runs through all desire is to be experienced fully and ultimately is heaven. But, we are able to access that peace here and now by following the will of God and returning to God when we err or stray. So today, it is my prayer that this peace that “surpasses all understanding” will find each of us every day.
 
God’s peace,
Z gardener
 
Author’s note: Today, another new sister has blessed us with her presence in the garden. She is a minister and doctor who works to heal our brothers and sisters inside and out. Welcome to the Good Morning Garden, sister.

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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

On Goodness
 
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.
 
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.
 
When we are in harmony with and undivided from the will of God, we achieve goodness. Rebellion against the will of God produces disharmony and exposes us to every human weakness of attitude, behavior and spirit. When we allows these weaknesses to dictate our thoughts, words and deeds we are subjected to every form of negative human behavior. When we engage in or allow these negative human behaviors, we hurt ourselves and those around us. 
 
So today, let us harmonize our will with God’s and enjoy all the goodness this world has to offer. It is ours for the taking.
 
Goodness through Godness,
Z gardener
 
Author’s note: Today we are blessed with two new gardeners. One is spreading God’s word through a personal ministry and one is a beloved cousin who seeks to bring joy to those around him. Brothers, welcome to the Good Morning Garden.
 
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On Sin

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

 
 
Traditional doctrine points to a sin against God, an act of disobedience, not a sin against the neighbor. And certainly, if we are to hold the doctrine of the Fall in any real sense, we must look for the great sin on a deeper and more timeless level than that of social morality.
 
This sin has been described by Saint Augustine as the result of Pride, of the movement whereby a creature (that is, an essentially dependent being whose principle of existence lies not in itself but in another) tries to set up on its own, to exist for itself. Such a sin requires no complex social conditions, no extended experience, no great intellectual development. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the center is opened to it. 
 
This sin is committed daily by young children and ignorant peasants as well as by sophisticated persons, by solitaries no less than by those who live in society: it is the fall in every individual life, and in each day of each individual life, the basic sin behind all particular sins: at this very moment you and I are either committing it, or about to commit it, or repenting it.
 
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. 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.
 
 
As opined many times in this space, sin; all sin, flows from the false illusion of separation. Separation from God, from others or from the universe. It is the indivisibility of existence that makes us all part of the same thing, God. When we let our sensory perception rule our spiritual perception, we fall victim to this false notion of separation from God and others because we appear so to the naked eye and physical senses. It is an illusion that sets us up for all sin and unrighteousness. 
 
Today, let us embrace our oneness with God and with each other so the true reality of joy and peace are revealed to us.
 
In unity,
Z gardener

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On God Wanting Us

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »

You ask ‘for what’ God wants you. Isn’t the primary answer that He wants you. We’re not told that the lost sheep was sought out for anything except itself [Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7]. Of course, He may have a special job for you: and the certain job is that of becoming more and more His.
 
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.
 
It is quite simple. God wants us, just as any father wants their child. And God wants us to become our very best, just as any loving father would. And, like a good father, God allows us to find our way by telling us the way, helping us when we stumble, suffering with us when we fall and nurturing us as we stand and heal. Lastly, like our earthly father always should, God forgives us when we repent and shows mercy for our transgressions once repented. As above, so below. 
 
Thank you Father,
Z gardener
 
Author’s Note: After three weeks in the Horn Island wilderness, this scribe returns to The Good Morning Garden tested, tired and true. Thanks to all who helped and those who prayed for this gardener. Attached is a photo of this special place.

 

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