rains still falling, i feel grateful having just gone through period of drought, for this soaking. last evening was sense of moisture permeating dryness, relieving internal heat accumulated from weeks without rains. YDH AB For Supplying our needs. with change in circumstance is change in perception. we, so bound by conditions of life. it is difficult indeed to transcend such crises but AB Is Near To Comfort.
Albeit created, Given Best Consummate Flawless surroundings, with our choices we have altered this state of being. like children, we know not the Way To Return To Original Goodness. AB Is Near To Assure Of Way, Guiding every step. Original Design So Perfect, even after millenniums in degradation, we are Given Choice Of LIFE, over and over, Unceasingly, Covered In Unrestrained LOVE, in the meanest abuse. amid desperation, the Greater Mercy Prepared for one.
we, so easily unhinged by slightest change. Comfort Arrives when we choose to Trust In AB’s Care, Provision, Settlement. caught in contention between Good and evil, we are no match for fallen archangel, no matter how insane this creature has become. knowing history of fall from beginning, existence encompassing entire history of mankind. we but living few score years have nothing on wickedness, Only AB’s on our side, keeping destruction at bay.
One Day Soon, corruption, falsehood, death will be called to account, put to an end. i wait for this moment, when separation is no more, gathered into Home Of AB, belong complete In AB For Good. AB’s Faithful Accomplishment Is our HOPE, Trust, Assurance, Guarantee.
“To be bad, [one] must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore [one] must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad [one] must borrow or steal from [one’s] opponent… It is a real recognition of the fact that evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given it by goodness. All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things — resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself.” cs lewis, mere christianity, bk 2, ch 2.
“There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by [shatan the opposer]. cs lewis, christian reflection. “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…. If we let Him — for we can prevent Him, if we choose — He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less.” cs lewis, mere christianity, bk 4, chs 8, 9.
“A man knows that he has increased in virtue when he finds increased pleasure in virtuous acts.” cs lewis, studies in medical and renaissance literature, ch 4. “No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.” cs lewis, letters.
“The proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator — to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature…. In the world as we now know it, the problem is how to recover this self-surrender. We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms…. To surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death…. Hence the necessity to die daily: however often we think we have broken the rebellious self we shall still find it alive.” cs lewis, the problem of pain, ch 6.
“Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is, Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
“It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin ever committed by a human being; but it would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever.” cs lewis, the problem of pain, ch 5.
“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand over to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?… A man who changed from having Bios (life which comes to us through nature, always tending to run down and decay, kept up by incessant subsidies from nature in the form of air, water, food, etc.) to having Zoe (Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe) would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.” cs lewis, mere christianity, bk 4 ch 1.
“If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course, anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.” cs lewis, mere christianity, bk 4, ch 2.
“For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you — you, the individual reader… Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another’s… Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it — made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.” cs lewis, the problem of pain, ch 10.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare…. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.” cs lewis, transposition and other addresses, ch 2.
“If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But, fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.” cs lewis, mere christianity, bk 3, ch 2.
“No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.” cs lewis, the great divorce, ch 11.
“When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else — something it never entered your head to conceive — comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.” cs lewis, mere christianity, bk 2, ch 5.
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