All the longing...

The sweetest thing in all my life 

has been the longing--to reach the Mountain, 

to find the place where all the beauty came from...

Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing?  

The longing for home?

C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

My soul yearns, yes, even pines 

and is homesick for the courts of the Lord; 

my heart and my flesh cry out 

and sing for joy to the living God.

Psalm 84:2 Amplified

Finding the still point with Sandy

and joining Deidra and the Sunday choir

Holy fuel

Jason and Sarah continue to walk with us through Mere Christianity.  This week we are chewing on Book II Chapter 3 The Shocking Alternative.  Here C. S. Lewis says:

God made us; invented us as a man invents an engine.  A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else.  Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.  He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.  There is no other.  That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion.  God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.  There is no such thing.

We sing songs that share this same idea, worshipping, telling our God that "You are the air I breathe" and "You're all I want, You're all I ever needed".  Sadly, all too often we follow-up on our singing by trying to live life on our own, denying the very truth we just confessed.

There is indeed a profound emptiness within each of us that itches, aches and screams to be filled.  This void is not a mistake, but planned by God to expand to take in more and more and more of what He created it to hold; His presence, His Spirit and His love.  I know that nothing else can flood my life with joy.

I pray that I do not allow the world or the enemy of my soul to convince me that I have enough.  Even as the Holy Spirit fills me, may I continue to be consumed by hunger for another taste, another moment, more of Him. 

Keep me desperate, Lord, so that I am not able to take another step without You, for only in my total dependance on You do I find peace.

You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry. Then you're ready for the Messianic meal  Luke 6:21 The Message

Stop by Jason's Connecting to Impact to join in the discussion.

A peculiar reality

This week in our journey through Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Jason and Sarah lead us to Book II – Chapter 2 The Invasion

Early this morning, I sat in my usual chair and spent time journaling with the Lord before I read this weeks portion. I am stunned once again that Jesus knew what I would be delving into and spoke about an upside down world. I share the words of C. S. Lewis first:

Reality, in fact is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.

And here are the words the Lord gave to me, inviting me to walk with Him and see from His perspective that things are not always as they appear:

Take My hand. When you walk with Me you can go where I go. We can step up on the clouds, higher, where you can see what I see.

From here – see the poverty of those who think themselves rich and the wealth of those who have nothing but find joy in Me.

From here – see what people think they do in secret – both the evil and the good.

From here – all the masks people hide behind become transparent and hearts shine through – those filled with light and ones blocked by darkness,

Up here nothing is concealed. Always there are cries of pain and need, shouts of joy, sobs of anguish, gasps of revelation.

Will you take My hand? Will you walk with Me? Up here, where what you think you know is often turned upside-down, inside-out?

Up here you will find My heart that never stops beating for you, for all of you.

Will you come?

Stop by Sarah's Living Between the Lines to join the discussion.

Finding light

This week, as Jason and Sarah continue to lead us, we are looking at Mere Christianity Book II What Christians Believe; Chapter 1. The Rival Conceptions of God.  Here C. L. Lewis concludes:

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning; just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. 

I chose to seek the light
hungry for sense in the nonsense
wanting to taste meaning, purpose
something deeper
than the random scattering
of life's events.

Yes, if I could notice
the darkness growing darker
than surely I had eyes to see.

Grace, it was, and grace it is,
yes grace indeed
that keeps those same eyes open now
to drink in light and life and love
blinking in tune
with His heartbeat.

Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see." Luke 10:23 NIV 


Come on over to Jason's Connecting to Impact to join this week's discussion.

Do I do what I should do?

This week we're looking at Chapter 3 of Mere Christianity, The Reality of the Law, where C. S. Lewis writes:

The law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them; but the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought to do and do not.  In other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts.  You have the facts (how men do behave) and you also have something else (how they ought to behave).  In the rest of the universe there need not be anything but the facts.

I can but only
stop
and rest a moment
in the place of gratitude
for grace
seeds freedom
allowing me to be
what nature would not

So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t.  I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.  I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.  Romans 7:14-21 NLT

By His Spirit alone
alive in me
am I anything
that is good,
holy, loving

Breathe in the joy
of being His.

Stop by Sarah's Living Between the Lines to join today's discussion, where I find her pondering the same passage of scripture.