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On Their Being No Ordinary People

July 10, 2014 by zgardener

 

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

July 8, 2014 by zgardener

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

July 7, 2014 by zgardener

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

July 3, 2014 by zgardener

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

July 2, 2014 by zgardener

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

July 1, 2014 by zgardener

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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June 30, 2014 by zgardener

On Free Will
 
 
The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: this surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the re-ascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendor than any world of automata would admit.
 
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.
 
Free will gives us the ability to choose. We can choose between red or blue, sweet or sour, happy or sad and yes, good or bad. Free will would be of no value if there were no choices to make. So, for free will to matter, we must have choices; between red and blue and yes, good and bad. This is just one answer as to why God allows bad to exist. It must be so if we are to be creatures of divine nature endowed with free will.
 
Free to choose,
Z gardener

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On learning to depend only on God

June 27, 2014 by zgardener

For it is a dreadful truth that the state of (as you say) ‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. That trouble goes so far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to Him as long as He leaves us anything else to turn to. 
 
I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and the day of judgement, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwillingly) to begin practising it here on earth. It is good of Him to force us: but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time….
 
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.
 

 

Indeed, how hard it can be to feel that it is good. But, when we follow God’s guidance, we will be able to know it is good before we can see it is good and then feel it is good until we can see the good in it. That is God’s promise and this witness is true.
 
Depending on God,
Z gardener

 

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On Self

June 24, 2014 by zgardener

 
A rejection, or in Scripture’s strong language, a crucifixion of the natural self is the passport to everlasting life. Nothing that has not died will be resurrected.
 
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.

 

Christian baptism is the symbol of dying to the self and being resurrected to God. It prefigures our literal death and resurrection. When we bury the self, God shines through us into the physical world. When we bury our bodies, we shine through into the spiritual world.
 
Dying to live,
Z gardener

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On The Real Us

June 23, 2014 by zgardener

The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs’, all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. 
 
He invented— as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. 
 
In fact what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. 
 
Eggs and alcohol and a good night’s sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. 
 
It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.
 
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.

 

We are infinitely more than the sum total of all the eggs and bacon we have consumed. Yet our commonly held sensory perception of self, creates a barrier to knowing our true nature and character. It is only when we let go of the self-hood we try to claim, that we can fully express the true self who is God within us.
 
We can not create our own universe, but we can become one with the universe created by God for us by seeking and following God’s will. Then, we will see and experience the true reality and be the real and true self God created us to be. 
 
Getting real,
Z gardener

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