Van der Leun posted this today. It hits me at my greatest area of temptation, I think.
“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
I wrote elsewhere:
ReplyDeleteI notice that man was made man in a garden, and told to fill the earth and subdue it. Perhaps I’m excessively literal, but that suggests to me the rest of the world wasn’t necessarily part of the garden. The picture I have is of people starting in the garden for a little practice and examples (e.g. dogs) and then advancing into a wild world with real opportunities and real dangers, subduing it to the glory of God while finessing the dangers like a sailboat before the storm. They find ways to tame and use the hawk and thorns, and treat tornadoes as a toreador does a bull. Who’d bother with roller coasters in a world like that?
All that is unfruitful speculation–that world is long lost and I believe God’s “fallback” plan will prove better, even though it doesn’t feel like it now.
One of my greatest temptations, too.
ReplyDeleteI have a little collection of favorite quotes. I think I will put that Lewis quote in.
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