Posts Tagged ‘cs lewis’

Wandering People and Planets

Posted: December 10, 2012 in Inspiration
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wanderingplanetThis is a devotional I shared last week with the staff of Family First.  I hope you enjoy it.

National Geographic: A search for would-be stars called brown dwarfs has yielded something even more elusive: a potential orphan planet.

Some four to seven times the mass of Jupiter, the wandering planet orbits no star, a team of French and Canadian astronomers reported last week.

About a dozen such untethered orbs were identified more than a decade ago in the Orion Nebula. Since then the pool of candidates has grown to several dozen.

These orphaned planets reminded me of a lot of people today.  Wandering with no light, no center, shiftless, purposeless, directionless, dead.

As Christians, of course, we revolve around the Son and look to Him for life and light.  He controls our orbit.  We trust in Jesus for our eternal salvation and destiny, but what about in our day to day walk?

Huge decisions face us in our lives.  It’s enough to get us paralyzed with anxiety, but what a gem, a promise we have from God:

James 1:5 – “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

You can have the wisdom of God for any situation you face simply by asking for it.  That’s it.  Just ask.  Believe.  It’s done.  But, as CS Lewis says, we always seem to make God the last option, to our huge detriment.

Tim Keller relates a story about chaplain who got a call at 3 AM to rush to the local hospital because a man absolutely had to talk to him about God.  When the chaplain arrived to the patient’s room, the man apologized for waking him up with his urgent call.  “I don’t need to talk to you anymore, Chaplain.  They mixed up my x-rays with someone else’s.  I thought I had terminal cancer.  Instead I just have a bit of swelling that will be better in a couple days.  I don’t need your services.”

How typical.  Only turning to God in extreme situations.  My encouragement to you today?  Don’t be like that.  Live a Godward life begging and pleading for His wisdom for all the different decisions personally and professionally you need to make.  Believe me, none of us are wise enough or morally pure enough to know how our lives should turn out.  Let’s rejoice that God has promised to give us the wisdom we need to choose rightly, and let’s live lives so we are clearly led by Him.  This is my prayer for you.

C.S. Lewis on humility

Posted: July 19, 2012 in Uncategorized
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C.S. Lewis on humility

“…Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man, he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

When Will We Go Back?

Posted: April 10, 2012 in Personal
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One of the biggest reasons I believe most young men are lost is that we no longer ask them to do great, bold, adventurous things, but instead try to remove anything distinctly masculine about them to prepare them for cubicle life.  But this goes against how God has made them.  The Lord has hardwired us to look for the battle line, the front line, the frontier, the undiscovered continents and constellations.  And to go “further in and higher up” (C.S. Lewis).  The space shuttle program has been just that.  I grew up on Star Trek, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars etc.  I dreamed of becoming an astronaut.  Still do.  The claustrophobia thing gets in the way.  And then the agoraphobia once I did my first spacewalk.  But other than that, I’m good to go.  Loved this NASA video narrated by Carl Sagan.  I am not a big government fan, but I would love for all of us to give back a little of our “entitlements” to fund us going back.  Our young men need an upward vision – literal and spiritual.

Pride

Posted: February 7, 2012 in Inspiration
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Tim Keller recently gave an outstanding sermon on pride that hit me right between the eyes.  I highly recommend listening to it during drive time one day.  Keller spends quite a bit of time unpacking C.S. Lewis’s quote on pride and how it is the “sin underneath all sins.”  Below is just such a quote I am proud to share with you.

“God wants to bring a man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. God wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents – or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.”

How to be a Scoundrel

Posted: November 14, 2011 in Inspiration
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Author C.S. Lewis addressed university students in 1944 about how peer pressure can lead to destruction.  It’s worth passing on to our children.  “The choice of scoundrelism will come over a cup of coffee and sandwiched between two jokes from the lips of a man whom you would like to know better.  Just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, his hinting will come.  You will be drawn in not by desire for gain or ease, but simply, because at that moment, you cannot bear to be thrust out into the cold.  Of all the passions, the passion for being a part of the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not a very bad man do very bad things.  If you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit.  It may end in a crash, a scandal, and prison; it may end in millions of dollars and high recognition.  But you will still be a scoundrel nonetheless.”

C.S. Lewis on happiness

Posted: August 17, 2011 in Inspiration
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“There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by kind of infection. 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 made them…they are great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center 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?” – C.S. Lewis

Our children and Narnia

Posted: August 3, 2011 in Personal
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It has been wonderful to see our kids so passionate about me and Christy telling them the story about Narnia.  I’m a big fan of stories, fairy tales and superhero stuff in general (Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Iron Man etc.) because they are either pre-evangelistic or gospel-clarifying to children.  Good exists.  Evil must be stopped.  Life is struggle.  Not everything that dies stays dead.

In the case of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, of course you have the sacrificial Lion laying down his life for the undeserving boy, but you also have more subtle hints.  Take for instance the wardrobe.  Its inside is bigger than its outside.  This is not random.  C.S. Lewis brings it up again about the stable in The Last Battle.  From the outside something may look small, constricting.  But inside it can be glorious and life giving.  But you have to go through the door.  Sound familiar?  So glad stories like this have gospel fumes!  Anyway, here is Logie Boy giving his take on TL, TW and TW.  Enjoy!

 

The Stable

Posted: July 14, 2011 in Inspiration
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“Look,” said Peter and pointed.

Tirian looked and saw the queerest and most ridiculous thing you can imagine. Only a few yards away, clear to be seen in the sunlight, there stood up a rough wooden door and, round it, the framework of the doorway: nothing else, no walls, no roof. He walked towards it, bewildered, and the others followed, watching to see what he would do. He walked round to the other side of the door. But it looked just the same from the other side: he was still in the open air, on a summer morning. The door was simply standing up by itself as if it had grown there like a tree.

“Fair Sir,” said Tirian to the High King, “this is a great marvel.”

“It is the door you came through with that Calormene five minutes ago,” said Peter smiling.

“But did I not come in out of the wood into the stable? Whereas this seems to be a door leading from nowhere to nowhere.”

“It looks like that if you walk round it,” said Peter. “But put your eye to that place where there is a crack between two of the planks and look through.”

Tirian put his eye to the hole. At first he could see nothing but blackness. Then, at his eyes grew used to it, he saw the dull red glow of a bonfire that was nearly going out, and above that, in a black sky, stars. Then he could see dark figures moving about or standing between him and the fire: he could hear them talking and their voices were like those of Calormenes. So he knew that he was looking out through the stable door into the darkness of Lantern Waste where he had fought his last battle. The men were discussing whether to go in and look for Rishda Tarkaan (but none of them wanted to do that) or to set fire to the stable.

He looked round again and could hardly believe his eyes. There was the blue sky overhead, and grassy country spreading as far as he could see in every direction, and his new friends all round him laughing.

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling himself, “that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.”

“Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than its outside.”

“Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” It was the first time she had spoken, and from the thrill in her voice, Tirian now knew why. She was drinking everything in even more deeply than the others. She had been too happy to speak. He wanted to hear her speak again…

C.S. Lewis – The Last Battle – Chronicles of Narnia