November 23,
2011
1:06 pm
God
is not hurried along in the time-stream of this universe any more than an
author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite
attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the
mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you are the only being He had
created. When Christ died, he died for you individually just as much as if you
had been the only man in the world.”
God
has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one.
“at
first if is natural for a baby to take its mother’s milk without knowing its
mother. It is equally natural for us to see the man who helps us without
serving Christ behind him. but we must not remain babies. We must go on to
recognize the real Giver. It is madness not to. Because, if we do not, we shall
be relying on human beings. And that is going to let us down. The best of them
will make mistakes; all of them will die. We must be thankful to all the people
who have helped us, we must honour them and love them. But never, never pin
your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the
whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand: but do not try
building a house on it.”
God
looks at you as you were a little Christ” Christ stands beside you to turn you
into one.
Christ
says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money
and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural
self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a
branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t
want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over
the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the
ones you think wicked-the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In
fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
Laziness
means more work in the long run.
The
cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.
He
never talked vague, idealistic gas. When he said, “Be perfect,” He meant it. He
meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of
compromise we are all hankering after is harder-in fact, it is impossible. It
may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder
for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.
We
are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an
ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
He
warned people to “count the cost” before becoming Christians. “Make no
mistake,” He says, “if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put
yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than
that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you
do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through.
Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable
purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never
rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect-until my Father can say
without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well
pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less.”
As
a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is
pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with
anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way,
he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”
To
shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice. To
submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. - C.S. LEWIS
