Tuesday, July 28, 2009

hmm.

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neightbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces on the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.


This is from The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis.

What would it mean to be "a great warrior on [God's] side" ?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

lovers so less wild

I'm very blog-ey this week, first of all.

Thought of the day: why do I go to anything and everything besides God to fill the lonely void inside of me? It's only after I've clicked on every facebook link and searched for fulfillment from every meaningless thing that I think to go to the one Person that can actually meet that need in me! Duh, Elsa!

I'm getting back to the place where I want it to be just Him and me, no one else. Ironically, as my life has become more simple with the summer, it has become more cluttered with meaningless things that I somehow fill my days with.

He is the last place I go to, the last Name I call. I can read about Him all I like, but it is somehow much harder to me to sit down and just talk to Him. It's easier to relate to Him as a vending machine or an ATM then as a Person, as THE Person.

Why?

Another mystery of my fallen self, I guess.

But thankfully, He's always there when I stroll, meander, or run back to Him. No lectures, no condemnations, just delight.

And thankfully, each time I get in that place of loneliness again, it becomes easier to choose Him first.

"Take my self and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee"

Ever

Only

All

for Him.

I want that now more than anything else.