Reflections on God … Man … Life
Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.
I’ve been reading the letters of Joy Davidman, who, before her untimely death from cancer at the age of 45, was, for the last few years of her life, the wife of C. S. Lewis. If you’ve ever seen the movie Shadowlands, you’ve seen an attempt by Hollywood to portray the relationship between the two, but it falls far short of reality. There are historical inaccuracies—even for the sake of artistic license, one must not stray too far—and C. S…. Read more »
The word “Puritan” has developed, over time, into a reproach. If someone is tagged a Puritan today, that supposedly means he is an austere, humorless, narrow-minded bigot. Yet what do most people really know about the Puritans who came over to America in droves, especially during the 1630s? Not much. What we have now is primarily a stereotype. Puritans were far more diverse than the stereotype allows. Some, indeed, were lacking humor, but that might be because they were persecuted… Read more »
C. S. Lewis wrote often of his search for Joy (which he always capitalized). As a non-Christian, it was an inconsolable longing for something always beyond reach. As a Christian, it took on an entirely new quality. In his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, he goes into some detail about what it meant to him. I’ll let him share now: In a sense, the central story of my life is about nothing else. . . . It is that of an… Read more »
I’ve been on this Christian journey for most of my life, seeking to grow in relationship with the Lord. Now that I’m older—not old, mind you—the longing for eternity, which will far eclipse what we currently consider “life,” has become more real. C. S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory sermon has, for many years, captured for me the sense of expectation that I sometimes feel as I look forward to the end of this temporal existence and the entrance into… Read more »
Charles Finney always spoke out of his vast experience dealing with those who needed to hear the Gospel. In his Revival Lectures, he pinpointed just what Christians are supposed to be doing to help the world understand truth. Here’s his perspective: One grand design of God in leaving Christians in the world after their conversions is that they may be witnesses for God. It is that they may call the attention of the thoughtless multitude to the subject, and make… Read more »
How appropriate, a day after writing about my visit to Wheaton’s Wade Center and researching C. S. Lewis that I would offer you some more of his insights. I’ve been doing this every Saturday and don’t see any reason to stop—his spiritual wisdom shines through everything he wrote. As with last week, I’m going to share more of his famous sermon The Weight of Glory. In it, as in a number of his works, he explains the inner longing within… Read more »
The Pilgrims survived the voyage to the New World. They avoided civil disorder by establishing the Mayflower Compact. But they weren’t able to escape the specter of disease and death. How did they handle this new challenge? First, they had to search out a place to call home. They sent out a party of men to try to find an opportune piece of land, but the Cape Cod area wasn’t hospitable to farming, and they also had their first encounter… Read more »