Being There...

Let no thought come to my heart,

Let no ruffle come to my spirit,

  that is hurtful to my poor body this night,

  nor ill for my soul at the hour of my death-

but may You Yourself, O God of life,

be at my breast, be at my back,

You to me as a star, You to me a guide,

from my life's beginning to my life's closing.

• A Celtic prayer (partial)

Church Might Bore But Heaven Won't

Our notion of Heaven involves perpetual negations:
no food, no drink, no sex, no movement, no mirth, no events, no time, no art.
Against these…we set one positive:
the visions and enjoyment of God. Since this is an infinite good, we hold (rightly) that it outweighs them all...that is, the reality of the Beatific Vision would or will outweigh... the reality of the negations.
But can our present notion of it outweigh our present notion of them? That is quite a different question. For most of us at most times the answer is No...[For] the Vision is a difficult, precarious, and fugitive extrapolation from a very few and ambiguous moments in our earthly experience.
While our idea of the negated natural goods is vivid and persistent, loaded with memories of a lifetime, built into our nerves and muscles and therefore into our imaginations.
[And so,] the negatives have an unfair advantage in every competition with the positive. What is worse, their presence...vitiates even such a faint and ghostlike notion of the positive as we might have had.
The exclusion of the lower goods begins to seem the essential characteristic of the higher good. We feel... that the vision of God will come not to fulfill but to destroy our nature...[and] this bleak fantasy often underlies our ...use of such words as “holy” or “pure” or “spiritual.”
We must believe – and therefore in some degree imagine--that every negation will be only the reverse side of a fulfilling. And we must mean by that the fulfilling, precisely, of our humanity, not our transformation into angels or our absorption into Deity.
For though we shall be [in certain ways] “like angels” and made “like unto” our Master, I think “like with the likeness proper to men:” as different instruments that play the same air [song] but each in its own fashion.
How far the life of the risen man will be sensory, we do not know. But I surmise that it will differ from the sensory life we know here, not as emptiness differs from water or water from wine but as a flower differs from a flower bulb or a cathedral from an architect’s drawing.

• C.S. Lewis in “Transposition” -- bolding and italics added

Time-It Won't Last Forever....

(more on metaphysics:)
II Let’s talk about Time-It's What We Have Least of....
Because my husband is away for weeks at a time, and usually thousands of miles from home, we are highly sensitive to the passage of time and its mysteries. Before he leaves, neither of us wants to talk about the time that he’ll be away, so we live in denial, nearly until the day he leaves. While he’s away we avoid the topic of time, but speak about what we will do when he returns. When he returns we always remark on how far away he was just the day before and how remarkable it is that he’s home now.

“Time is a funny thing,” my husband says, "You think the day will never arrive-then it does-and then it's past. Looking back, it seems like I was never there." When he says this I silently muse that this is how it is with our lives.
C.S. Lewis says of the verse in II Peter 3:8, “…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day” that it “seems to take us out of the time-series altogether” (which is somewhat ironic, since Peter’s experience with the Lord is firmly based in time, space and reality). To Lewis this passage suggests because God is permanent and eternal, there is no past for Him and adds that we actually seek to be loosed from Time’s domination.
By that, I mean, that though we live in time, organize it, plan around it (or not), we are still shackled to it. It’s as if we are chained to a dead man and we cannot do anything in life without making arrangements to somehow work around this corpse we cannot unchain ourselves from (for it is quite dour).
You can see what I mean if you consider your best moments in life: you “lose all track of time” when you are immersed in a great conversation, with good company, or in a wonderful experience, whether in learning, outdoors, or a story (or movie). Parties are never better than those in which you have no sense of self-consciousness, but wherein you are “in the moment” and “time flies.” (Probably for this reason, the period from puberty through young-adulthood is the worst time, for one seems to be perpetually self-conscious.)
Lewis goes on to say, “…our hope is to emerge [from this earthbound life]… from the tyranny [of time], the unilinear poverty, of time… to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to cure that aching wound which mere succession and mutability inflict on us, almost equally when we are happy as when we are unhappy.”
Lewis points out the obvious about our perspective on time: we are never quite used to the passing of time. He finds this remarkable since it’s unavoidable to be in this physical universe and not be affected by the passage of time. Lewis writes, “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experiences were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised by the wetness of water.” We (humans) notice and are continually surprised by the mark of time when we revisit friends to find them aged, attend a 10th or 20th reunion, or hit an anniversary. On those occasions, if not every morning, it seems something passes our lips, as we voice a thought on the passage of time.
Lewis suggests that time is so outstanding to us because we were never really made to be finite creatures-but rather for eternity: “…[it would be strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised by the wetness of water] unless of course fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.” Upon experiencing land, the fish would be contented not to have to be wet anymore—just as we, once we enter into eternal life, might settle back in the Eternal Kingdom, as say, “Ah yes, this is right-no more time or worry about the passage of time.”
(CS Lewis is quoted from final chapter in “Reflections on the Psalms”)
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How Man Manages and Searching for Meaning

I've noted polar opposite (and extreme) differences in the way people live out their lives on earth with respect to time. At one extreme, I call it “Managed Man.” He’s carefully, thoughtfully, planned out and managed his life so as to reach the end in the fullness of health and wealth. Managed Man plans against all possible disastrous occurrences, and plans to avoid them all. Managed Man has little use for God. God is beyond his control. The problem with this life is that everyone dies in the end. God cannot be avoided.
The second group is the one that lives for today, often times he’s the one who thinks he’s going to die young anyway. He’s Hell-On-Wheels, Live-for-Today. He’ll take too many known risks: drinking, drugs, poor eating habits, bad behaviors, etc. For some reason, he’s decided he’s not worthy of God’s respect and love, so why bother trying? Often he assumes he’s “not good enough” for God and “going to hell anyway,” so he might as well enjoy life here. Live-for-Today Man, despite his cocky attitude, is quite afraid to face enquire into what the truth might actually be: God as Father does not treat His sons as hated sons who are worthy only if they perform, but as beloved (and needy) little ones-whom He craves to be loved by.
Most people fall in the middle between these two extremes. Wherever we are now, if we ignore the Big Questions, we'll always be distracted and caught up in the little questions. Big Questions deserve honest and focused exploration. If we instead choose to live in distracted denial, we'll abort a significant growth step. 
I submit that it would likely embarrass humanity if we had any idea that the only thing God craved yet lacked a return on the love He has for us.
I Clearing The Ground:
Let's say "Managed Man" and "Live-For-Today" man have both decided to take a step forward and to take stock of what is ahead of him beyond this temporal life. When he does, he will soon realize he cannot do this alone, he'll find that man cannot shut himself up in himself, as if in a little world, and have all he needs at hand to sufficiently explain himself to himself. I suggest each man should first make a personal inventory of his immanent resources.
To do that, he should recognize both his aspirations towards things that are good, a thirst for truth and faithfulness, or certainty, or a sense of fulfillment. If he is makes an honest and concerted effort to do so, will find that he cannot reach these goals or ends on his own. The gap left between the desire and dream and his ability to comprehend it, points out simply that man needs, desperately needs, some kind of transcendent help beyond this little world.
It is at this point he has cleared the ground and has begun a search for meaning.
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As Sands Through the Hourglass So Is 2010

God's Odd Math of Love

Agape, the sacrificial kind of love from God given to mankind, which is lived out in action is the only common ground between the genders, across the tribes, and nations and cultures. It is what enables a person to be selfless but not pitiful; to be forgiving and yet strong; to be humble but not cowardly; to be a crusader but not a conqueror and overtaker. A person who loves with agape love has more love the more he gives it away.
It is what makes life for the Christian one “Great Giveaway.”

• Charity Johnson

“Even friendship finds rocks to founder on, for though its sea is immense, it has shores. [Yet, the apostle] Paul announces the exception when he tells us: ‘Love [agape] never ends.’ (I Corinthians 13). …One day everything will be made of agape. All those things that we made of agape in this world will last… But nothing else. The only thing that will not be burned up in the final fire is the one thing that is stronger than the fire of destruction: the fire of creation. For agape is the fire of creation.

God created out of agape. Just as the only way to conquer a passion is by a stronger passion, just as the only way to conquer an evil love is by a stronger good love, the only way to endure the final fire is not by any water that tries to put it out, but by the only fire that is stronger still: agape. This is the very fire of God’s essential being. Only love is stronger than death. (p 91)
….
[Eventually] lovers of God [will] become one with the fire of their Beloved. …British poet Stephen Spender wrote their epitaph: ‘Born of the sun, they traveled a brief while toward the sun and left the vivid air tinged with their honor.’

That is what a Christian is. Not to be one is life’s only real tragedy.” (p.93)

• Peter Kreeft, from The God Who Loves You

When You Just Don't Feel Loving....

The highest priority God gives us in life is to love him wholeheartedly and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Yet, this can be a struggle for the most kind-hearted Christian. Regarding this dilemma, C. S. Lewis wrote:

"But though natural likings should normally be encouraged, it would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. Some people are “cold” by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having bad digestion is a sin; and it does not cut them out from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of learning charity.
The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his “gratitude” you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more, or, at least, to dislike it less.
Consequently, though Christian charity sounds a very cold thing to people whose heads are full of sentimentality, and though it is quite distinct from affection, yet it leads to affection. The difference between a Christian and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or “likings” and the Christian has only “charity.” The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he “likes” them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on—including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning….
Some writers use the word charity to describe not only Christian love between human beings, but also God’s love for man and man’s love for God. About the second of these two, people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feelings in themselves. What are they to do? T he answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it."

• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Macmillan Publishing Company, Touchstone edition, 1996), pp. 116-117.

God Loves You-Is that Important?

“God loves you”: How revolutionary and how life-changing is that truth to the task of coming to love and accept ourselves!

Self-esteem is necessary for all psychological health, and there is no absolutely sure basis for self-esteem other than the assurance of God’s love for me.

— — — — — —

Faith and love are the two things Christ most frequently calls for in the Gospels. How are they related?

In two ways. The most familiar one is that faith leads to love. Love is the practice of the faith. But the other way is also valid. Love can lead to faith.
I think most converts come to the faith in this second way, through the love of God…or of something. Father Zossima, in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, teaches a “woman of little faith” how she can regain her lost faith through this path. When she was a child she believe unthinkingly. She cannot go back to that. But in her adult life she learned all the alternative plausible explanations of the physical sciences, which seemed to make faith unnecessary and intellectually disreputable. If science can explain everything, is not the faith a mere myth? How can I know that when I come to die instead of meeting God there won’t just be “just the burdocks on my grave?”

Father Zossima answers, “There is no proving it. But you can be convinced of it.” How?

»Through the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. Insofar as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain. «
………
Love has eyes and once they are opened we will see our neighbor’s soul as a thing…that could not be replaced, not just in our feelings but in objective reality; that is, in God’s consciousness.
………
Love perceives the unique and incalculable value of each of the Father’s children. We see clearly that if there is no God, these souls have no Father, these images, no model, these sparks no originating fire, these sunbeams no sun. Thus love perceives both God and immortal souls.

[However] The whole argument depends on an insight, an understanding, which you have only when you love. That love must be agape. It cannot be the passive love of feelings but the active love of agape. It cannot be the “love in dreams” that is like a pillow but the “love in action” that is like God…

Peter Kreeft,
The God Who Loves You: ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,’
2004, Ignatius Press, San Francisco

Just Yours

Bonhoeffer's poem, Who Am I?, was written in prison in June of 1944, though I have posted it elsewhere, some things are always good to read again. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was also a participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent execution by hanging in April 1945, shortly before the war's end.

Who am I?

They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others?
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of
mine,
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God,
I am Thine!

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How Do You Cope? (Counselors of Comedy)

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
(Shakespeare, from As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, beginning line 139)
….
Here I am veering a bit from my standard fare (theology/philosophy) to take up the topic of how people cope. If I were to create an icon representing the totality of our human existence, it likely would resemble the universal symbols for theatre in which the Greek theatre masks show a smiling/laughing face (representing Thalia, the god of comedy) and a sad face (representing Melpomene, the god of tragedy).


This dramatic analogy tells us that our existence, much like a drama, is laced with successes, failures, laughter, pain, tears, mystery and agony-now, add to the drama "real life" factors such as perseverance, boredom, monotony, repetitive annoyances. And the question, how do the “actors” in this temporal "drama" grapple with the frustrating thought that satisfactory “resolutions” may not come? Indeed, we find for some unexplained reason we are forced to live with unresolved conflict, great inequities, with constant pain, or deep heartache. The question we are left with (barring the superficial, temporary deadening effects of drugs and alcohol), how do people cope? I think we grapple with the continual grind and the sometimes near-crushing defeats through two primary means: counselors (whether therapeutic or spiritual, sometimes both) and with laughter.


For a variety of circumstantial reasons, I have never been to an official “counselor” or nor do I seek out comedians. However, I have had and still have my share of both counselors and comedians though I do not pay money to see either. Most of my counselors were relatives, extremely close friends of the family and spiritual advisers. I have met comedians everywhere, and have resident comedians in my very large extended family and in my smaller but close circle of friends.


Clearly, it's not necessary to state the differences between counselors and comedians, I think though, the similarities are less obvious. Let's look at the outcome of visiting both a good counselor and a good comedian because it is identical. When you feel the "itch" returning, your mind turns to that person as the one who can "scratch" it satisfactorily.
So, what it is about a counselor that makes me wish to return? There are several things.


Obviously, she’s a person-and though this seems too trite to mention, the physical presence of another caring human brings something indefinable into the picture. Indefinable because there is something about the presence of a human that cannot be replicated in any other manner. Secondly, she is there for me. Her entire existence at that moment is for me-and none of it is for her. She also tries to put herself in my shoes to understand my world through my eyes. And, without judgment, she speaks both comforting and encouraging words. When we separate, we leave with a handshake or hug, or a check, and a promise to see each other again.


How is this similar to a comedian?


The comedian is physically there, and he is there for me. Only a failed comedian speaks on topics which interest himself alone. Good comedians know to make me laugh, he needs to see my situations through my eyes. So, he's forced to project himself, and he places himself in my world, imagining himself to be me. In this way, he is there for me. Yes, though he is gratified by a smile and a chuckle, much as the counselor is gratified by tears or a resolution, still, his emotions remain outside of my concern. In a way, he serves me, I do not serve him. The comedian speaks into my situation and draws a perspective that I had not seen before. In some way, like the counselor, without judgment, his words break that awful load of concern or tension. And the chuckle, guffaw, or laugh he eventually elicits helps me recall that the sun continually shines on the backside of the clouds. When we depart, I know we'll see each other again, for he needs to make me laugh as much as I need to laugh.


If you think of your life as making a trail in an enormous field of mature corn. You feel lost and helpless, all you can do is go forward. There are other people also making their way through this field, sometimes you run in to them. When you run in to a counselor, he will ask you which turns you took, you won't ask him. All types of hand-wringing about your wrong turns will pour out of your lips. A good counselor lets you talk, and when you're ready, comforts you, and perhaps, gives you some advice on the next few turns (which he has already taken). If he’s not taken those turns, he’ll at least help you think them through.


When you meet the comedian in the cornfield, he already has in mind those wrong turns you took, you do not need to open your mouth-he does it for you. So while he's voicing your internal frustrations, he's able to make light of the wrong turns: revealing to you, possibly the ludicrous decisions you made (or are about to make). As you are laughing, you realize you laugh out of surprise for the insights into your life-but mostly for the perspective he brings. Though he's not aloof, he's bringing fresh eyes and a new perspective on your turns. To say the obvious in a subtle way is somehow comforting: we're all lost in this cornfield, we're all making wrong turns-and no one gets out alive.


In a way, only God “hovers above” the cornfield and can see the entire layout, the entrances, exits and pitfalls. The counselor is there to provide comfort for the wrong turns you have taken, while the comedian provides relief, reassuring you that though this is your first time through the cornfield, everyone makes the mistakes of the same sort.


There is some sort of comfort in knowing that you are not the only person in the history of mankind who has walked through a fancy restaurant with toilet paper clinging to the bottom of his best shoes.


The question, then is not: is the counselor/mentor or the comedian necessary, but when are they needed? God has put people in our life who cause us pain and pleasure. But, He's also given us people who are gifted in providing us with soul care, a listening ear and a caring heart. Sometimes they come in the form of counselors, but sometimes they are comedians.

Men have been wise in different modes, but they have always laughed the same way. (Samuel Johnson)

• Charity Johnson

The Hypothetical Real

CS Lewis discussing the possibility of faith in a Creator God. and the mystery of man's desires:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

It Really is About Perspective

What Ecclesiastes Told Me Today (parts of chapters 4, 5 and 6)

God has given men: “a sense of the past and future, but no comprehension of God’s work from the beginning to end." This should tell us that we live in a state of unawareness. Our comprehension of today, yesterday and tomorrow in not only limited, but it also distorted. We view time through the lenses of our thought-life and that means we focus on what is important to me now. Whether it has any real importance becomes a moot question when we pour our energy into our understanding what is valuable from the eternal perspective.
Ecclesiastes states it quite simply-God wishes us to “be happy and live the best life while you’re still alive.” That seems to easy, doesn’t it? It reiterates this several times: we need to eat and drink-and enjoy the rest that comes after work: “this is a gift from God.”
Ecclesiastes reminds me of who God is-He is not to be trifled with. As Lord and Creator, Eternal Judge, He is not just my pal. Ready for a good joke, a quick promise, just as quickly broken, or a sincere and well-intentioned “recommitment” that is superficial. He’d rather I take the time to consider Him well than to make bold statements about my spirituality, to ponder Him than to take my theological stand. In short, He’s not easily impressed.
_________________________________________________________
Ecclesiastes tells me that what exists in the course of normal life has always existed: the same struggles, the same joys, the same defeats, the same victories, and satisfactions. Nothing is truly new. For example, where justice should be, we’ll find wickedness; and where righteousness should be, there is wickedness, too. People have been oppressed forever-and comforters are few. It reminds me that everyone is under someone’s authority-and not to be shocked at oppression when I see it.
For all our intelligence and superiority as humans, we all die, like wild animals do. Not only do not know what tomorrow will bring, but we do not know when we will die.
Further, it tells me that the intelligentsia-those superior humans who are so gifted and talented they are smart in everything-have no true advantage. No matter how much they learn, that for all their advantages, they’re giving nothing to those after them. They are here on earth for a short time and then they are gone.
The kind of work that has striving and over-achievement written all over it comes from rivalry between men. That kind of labor is unsatisfying. Indeed, it’s as good as chasing the wind-as elusive. It states that the man who labors to achieve yet lacks friends, brothers or sons never actually attains fulfillment. He has wealth and loneliness. It states what he does have simply:“emptiness.”

It says that the man who loves wealth can never get enough of It. And, not only that, but if he’s in love with it, he actually gets no pleasure from it. Wealth is attracts all sorts of people, seeking to siphon off that wealth. The surprising baggage of wealth is a restless sleep. Thinking they’re stockpiling wealth for their family and grandchildren, they rarely consider how they will have wasted their life the day that their luck runs out, the week when the unthinkable actually happens and come to nothing. What will they have spent their life on when they wake up to find they’ve spent their life for nothing? All that energy and time, and time and work, none of which can be regained. The pity is that is the loss is not the wealth, but the time, lost forever. Wealth can be regained, but time can never be returned to you. All his energies and life spent on gaining money which will be worthless anyway when he dies. It reminds me that working for wealth is like a dirty rag:because it is dirty, is a breeding ground for infestation. Similarly, wealth, for all its seeming innocent gilding, is infested. It is infested with problems: decisions, defending, guarding and scheming, to name a few. It tells me that joining with these problems and clustering together come other things: gnawing anxiety, stresses, sometimes sickness and, (because it’s all about competition) feelings of resentment.
God has given you one life—time and people are most precious to you. Whether you are rich or poor, of great rank or an unknown, it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, for you are known to God. Take the good things in this world and enjoy what He has given you in the time He has given you: don’t stress over how long a life you will have-none of us really know how long we have anyway.
Rather, pay attention to what God has given you, and be thankful. In fact, if a man “has it all” – wealth, a large family, live a long life-but if he doesn’t actually enjoy his blessings, then his life was pointless.

We are not producers, we are not here to perform or turn up in a talent search of some sort, but rather, we are to see what we do have and be grateful for it.
Who said Ecclesiastes was depressing?

© Charity Johnson

Something's Gotta Give....

"The danger is not that religion has become the content of [television] but that [television] may become the content of religion....
[One example is that] on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. God comes out as second banana."

• Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1984).

The Great Ummmmm....

Dear Nihilist Friends, (Materialists may look on, as well),
Please ponder these words:

If I should cast off this tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant--
What then?

• Stephen Crane from "The Black Riders and Other Lines"

Life - Rehearsed, Cut Short and Rectified

What difference does it make to worship an infinite God?

"But God’s infinitude belongs to us and is made known to us for our everlasting profit. Yet, just what does it mean to us beyond the mere wonder of thinking about it? …Because God’s nature is infinite, everything that flows out of it is infinite also.
We poor human creatures are constantly being frustrated by limitations imposed upon us from without and within. The days of the years of our lives are few, and swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give. Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency we are forced to lay our instruments down. There is simply not time enough to think, to become, to perform what the constitution of our natures indicates we are capable of.
How satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. For Him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years.

God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves. …time is [no longer] a devouring beast; [but] before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands. The foe of the old human race becomes the friend of the new…But there is more. God’s gifts in nature have their limitations. They are finite because they have been created, but the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus is as limitless as God. The Christian ...possesses God’s own life and shares His infinitude with Him. In God there is life enough for all and time enough to enjoy it. Whatever is possessed of natural life runs through its cycle from birth to death and ceases to be, but the life of God returns upon itself and ceases never. …this is life eternal: to know the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent."

• A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (from chapter 8, "God's Infinitude")

We Are All Hopeless Cases

We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.

• Karl Barth

Down? Depressed? Lonely? Unloved?

God does love you...you know.

"…“God is love” … an essential attribute of God.

We do not know, and we may never know, what love is, but we can know how it manifests itself…[For example,] we see it showing itself as good will. Love wills the good of all and never wills arm or evil to any. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”
Fear is the painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made to suffer....The world is full of enemies and as long as we are subject to the possibility of harm from these enemies, fear is inevitable. The effort to conquer fear without removing the causes altogether futile. As long as we look for hope in the law of averages, as long as we must trust for survival to our ability to outthink or outmaneuver the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid. And fear has torment. …to know that love is of God and to enter into the secret place leaning on [Him]-this and only this can cast our fear. God is love and God is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it…
Love is also an emotional identification. It considers nothing its own but gives all freely to the object of its affection…It is a strange and beautiful eccentricity of the free God that He has allowed His heart to be emotionally identified with men. Self-sufficient as He is, He wants our love and will not be satisfied until He gets it. Free as He is, He has let His heart be bound to forever.
..The Lord takes particular pleasure in His [people]. .. Earth is the place where the pleasures of love are mixed with pain, for sin is here, and hate and ill will. In such a world as ours love must sometimes suffer… [Yet] the causes of sorrow will finally be abolished...and the new race will enjoy forever a world of selfless, perfect love.

It is the nature of love that it cannot lie quiescent. It is active, creative and benign. …So it must be where love is, it must ever give to its own, whatever the cost.
The love of God is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men and women. He loves us all with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end.

In Christian experience there is a highly satisfying love content that distinguishes it from all other religions and elevates it to heights far beyond even the purest and noblest philosophy. This love God is [not even]…a thing; it is God Himself…

…Christian joy is the heart’s harmonious response to the Lord’s song of love.”

• A. W. Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy

"The World is too Much with Us"

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--

(partial)

William Wordsworth, 1807

5 Quotes from CS Lewis

♥ The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

♥ It is hard to have patience with people who say "There is no death" or "Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

♥ If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

♥ Only the truly forgiven are truly forgiving.

♥ If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

•  C.S. Lewis (from assorted texts)

Life's fleeting; eternity's forever

From: part IV of "Under Ben Bulben"

Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

• William Butler Yeats