Ever pick up text - of any sort - and find it wallops you with that peculiar but oddly invigorating message of "This one's for you"? You see a billboard, thumb a magazine, spy a fb post...whatever...and it's like a douse of cold water?
Today, I had one such experience during my devotional, one that reminded me that not all in life is rational. (But, oh, if wishing made it so.) Alas, I cannot just think everything out because the intellect demands data I cannot always grip. Thus, we need faith, so that when it dawns on us what we think we tightly grip is nothing but wind between our fingers, we're more able to let it roll. And find change on the other side.
In one sense the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't." Do not, I implore you, start asking yourselves, "Have I reached that moment?" Do not sit down and start watching your own mind to see if it is coming along. That puts a man quite on the wrong track. When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do no know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "Hullo! I'm growing up." It is often only when he looks back that he realizes what has happened and recognizes it as what people call "growing up". You can see it even in simple matters. A man who starts anxiously watching to see whether he is going to sleep is very likely to remain wide awake. [...] And what matters is the nature of the change in itself, not how we feel while it is happening. It is the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God."
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Today, I had one such experience during my devotional, one that reminded me that not all in life is rational. (But, oh, if wishing made it so.) Alas, I cannot just think everything out because the intellect demands data I cannot always grip. Thus, we need faith, so that when it dawns on us what we think we tightly grip is nothing but wind between our fingers, we're more able to let it roll. And find change on the other side.
So here's my wallop.
You never know - maybe it'll be yours, too.
You never know - maybe it'll be yours, too.
In one sense the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't." Do not, I implore you, start asking yourselves, "Have I reached that moment?" Do not sit down and start watching your own mind to see if it is coming along. That puts a man quite on the wrong track. When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do no know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "Hullo! I'm growing up." It is often only when he looks back that he realizes what has happened and recognizes it as what people call "growing up". You can see it even in simple matters. A man who starts anxiously watching to see whether he is going to sleep is very likely to remain wide awake. [...] And what matters is the nature of the change in itself, not how we feel while it is happening. It is the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God."
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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