Reflections on God … Man … Life
I have no problem re-reading the works of C. S. Lewis. It’s been a few years now since I did an initial re-reading of The Four Loves. I’m now entering my second re-reading and finding things I didn’t remember. I’m the kind of person who marks up a book so I can go back to those particular passages that had meaning for me. As I’m going through The Four Loves again, I find myself adding to the markings—words and phrases… Read more »
As part of my devotions each morning, I’ve been reading short meditations from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. As a young man at Oxford, he developed “methods” of discipline for his Christian life. He was sincere. Yet after a failed experience as a missionary to Georgia, he knew his faith was lacking. God had to rework his faith into something that burned in his heart, not as just an outward discipline, as worthy as that discipline might be. I’m… Read more »
In my ongoing preparation for teaching C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia at my church, I’ve now completed five of the seven books, the latest being The Horse and His Boy. This book is unique as being the only one where no one from our world enters Narnia; rather, it focuses on two young people, Shasta and Aravis. The former is a slave seeking the freedom he heard exists in the land of Narnia; the second is a girl fleeing… Read more »
I wrote in a earlier post that I’m preparing to teach C. S. Lewis’s entire Narnia series (in the published order) on Wednesday evenings at my church—the first three in the fall quarter and the last four in the winter (although here in Florida the word “winter” is more like “far less humid and much more comfortable”). My goal is to finish this preparation during the summer, as I will be quite busy when the new semester begins at my… Read more »
I’ve studied American history in depth now for decades, and I am convinced of one thing for sure: human nature is the same throughout all of history. Now, that shouldn’t be an epiphany for Christians, since we believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yet the study of history only emphasizes that poignant truth. I don’t claim that politicians are some special kind of sinner, but when one lusts for political power, one can… Read more »
C. S. Lewis was just as human as the rest of us. Perhaps some of us have a tendency to think that such a great thinker, writer, and teacher—and who was famous enough to merit being the subject of a Time magazine cover—wouldn’t have too many “bumps” in his life or become weary of well-doing. Not true. That magazine cover is from 1947. By that time, he had become a household name in Britain due to his BBC broadcasts during… Read more »
“In a sense,” C. S. Lewis wrote in his autobiography, “the central story of my life is about nothing else.” What was that “nothing else”? He continued, “It is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” Now he comes to the point: “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure.” I presume that most people today would not see any… Read more »