Reflections on God … Man … Life
Today I turn 69. I hope I’ve learned some things in those 69 years. I hope I’ve learned about the character of God, that He is both righteous and merciful. His law is good and right and He has every reason to exclude all of us from His presence because of our rebellious, sinful hearts. Yet He seeks to show mercy. He will be the Judge because righteousness must be upheld, but He longs to shower us with His grace…. Read more »
“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is equally relevant.” We live so much in the “present” that we often neglect what we say we believe about the transitory nature of this world. We have an eternity that awaits us, yet… Read more »
The Magician’s Nephew was the Narnia book that took C. S Lewis the longest to write. He conceived it as a way to explain the origin of Narnia, as well as an imaginative answer to how a wardrobe could have such magical powers and why a lamp-post seemingly pops up in the middle of a forest. I believe he succeeded admirably. As I’ve explained in previous posts, I have been preparing to teach the Narnia series at my church. Doing… Read more »
Let’s talk about money and accountability for how it is used. Now, that may sound rather mundane, but we do have a money and accountability problem in this nation. Why is this important? Jesus spoke about the connection in Luke 16 when offering a parable about someone who was dishonest as a money manager. It ends with these pointed words to the rest of us: Whoever is faithful with very little will also be faithful with much, and whoever is… 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 have never been at such odds with American culture. That’s fine, if being at odds means I’m remaining faithful to Biblical standards of morality. But there is a price to pay for being faithful. Some Christians are experiencing legal nightmares due to their stance. That hasn’t happened to me yet, but everyone who refuses to bow to the new immorality will receive criticism, sometimes harsh criticism, in some way. For instance, try saying something like this publicly and see… 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 »