A teacher is simply a student with unlimited chalkboard privileges.
• Dec. 4, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sunday
"Hope...means...a continual looking forward to the eternal world...It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next...It is since Christian have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither."
From Mere Christianity
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• Nov. 28, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sunday
"For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through Friendship itself, so that it is His instruments for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host."
From "The Four Loves"
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• Nov. 20, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sundays
"Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great, Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate."
From Poems - Footnote to all prayers
"A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam."
From The Dark Tower & Other Stories
"Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consiste of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty and every other moment from the beginning of the world is always the Present for Him."
From Mere Christianity
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• Nov. 13, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sundays
"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 centre 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. We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God's feet before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God's share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of "our own" pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be "our own."...Thus all day long, and all the days of our life, we are sliding, slipping, falling away-as if God were, to our present consciousness, a smooth inclined plane on which there is no resting."
From The Problem of Pain
"The human spirit had turned from God and become its own idol, so that though it could still turn back to God, it could do so only by painful effort, and its inclination was self-ward. Hence pride and ambition, the desire to be lovely in its own eyes and to depress and humiliate all rivals, envy, and restless search for more, and still more, security , were now the attitudes that came easiest to it...A new species, never made by God, had sinned itself into existence."
From The Problem of Pain |
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• Oct. 24, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sundays
"The
fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less.
The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met.
The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten. He sees the
whole subject, by now, in such a different light that he cannot
conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other
difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren't."
From Reflections on the Psalms
"The
maternal instinct...is a Gift-love, but one that needs to give;
therefore needs to be needed. But the proper aim of giving is to
put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.
We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed
themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need out
teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love. It
must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making
ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say "They need me no
longer" should be our reward. But the instinct, simply in its own
nature, has no power to fulfil this law."
From The Four Loves
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• Oct. 17, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sunday...on Monday
"The
sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that
God gave them free will...because He saw that from a world of free
creatures, even though they fell, He could work out a deeper
happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would
admit."
From Miracles
"Evil comes from the abuse of free will."
From The Problem of Pain
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• Oct. 9, 2005 - C.S. Lewis Sundays
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I do believe that I will start a new blog tradition for Sundays
entitled C.S. Lewis Sundays. I do so enjoy the writings and
thought processes of the late Lewis. While reading this evening I
happened upon a laugh-out-loud funny of Lewis' that I must share from The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves:
"Minto
told you about our present bother. The guests are still here, and
will be, so far as I can see, until the end of January. Oh
Arthur, what a snag it is that the people who are pitiable are not necessarily likeable.
Molly Askins is emphatically one of those people of whom old
Foord-Kelsie said 'We must learn to love those whom we can't
like.' She's what you would call an encroaching person-do you
know the type of small, dark woman with big gentle eyes and soft voice,
who just gently and softly and even pathetically gets her own way in
everything and really treats the house as a hotel? However, the
thing's a duty and there's an end of it: tho, by the bye as W. [Lewis's
brother Warren] and I were saying the other day, the New Testament
tells us to visit the widows, not to let them visit us!"
And because it is the first entry...the "grand entrance" of this
feature, I must add a second that brought a new perspective of the
glory we receive through our Savior. From Miracles:
"For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity."
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