If you haven’t read the Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis, you’ve missed out on one of the great joys of life. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently wrote a book about C S Lewis. He describes the extraordinary gift of Narnia like this: it allows someone who doesn’t believe in God to know how it feels to have a living, powerful God.
Warning: If you hate stories, stay well away from them. They are not for you. But if you love a good read, forget the movies and get down to your local library. NOW! Start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Then Prince Caspian and then drop in the real treat: The Horse and his Boy. Ignore the “children’s section” classification. They’re for EVERYONE who finds truth easier to grasp when it comes in story format. Plus they’re short. With drawings!
After that advert, here’s a piece from another book of C S Lewis. The Screwtape Letters are a series of letters from a senior devil to a more junior one, Wormwood, advising him on how to wreck his “patient’s” life. (Victim, more like.) Screwtape is on a rant about God:
“He’s a hedonist [google it] at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a façade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at his right hand are “pleasures for evermore”. Ugh! I don’t think He has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise… He’s vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least- sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages.”
In these days of bright hot sun and holidays and the relief of Frank and Marion T getting stronger, let’s enjoy the summer and give our thanks to our generous God who delights to bless us.
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights”. James 1:17