MONDAY THOUGHT 5/4/09

May 4, 2009 on 1:37 am | By John Ingrisano | In Faith & Forgiveness | No Comments
Instant Bliss.  Just Add Prayer
 
A lot of us think this God stuff is a good deal … until it doesn’t bring immediate results.  “I felt so good when I first believed.   But then….”  
 
I don’t know much, but I don’t think the name of this game is Instant Bliss.  I do know that God gives us strength and guidance, not freedom from troubles.  Yes, there may be a burning bush now and then, but my experience is that hoping for a Doctor Feel Good euphoria is really not the point and purpose.
 
So, just what is the point and purpose?  Maybe, as C.S. Lewis writes (in this loooooooong excerpt), it’s about trying to make those right choices each and every mundane day, not sitting around waiting for a bright light and a soul filled with joyful giggles.  Celebrate those ordinary joys, those grindingly routine blessings and setbacks, those seemingly endless choices and challenges with which we are constantly blessed. — jri
 
“People often think of Christian morality as a kind
of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of
rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other
thing.’  I would much rather say that every time you
make a choice you are turning the central part of
you, the part of you that chooses, into something a
little different from what it was before.  And taking
your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices,
all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing
either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature:
either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and
with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that
is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its
fellow-creatures, and with itself.  To be the one kind of
creature is heaven:  that is, it is joy and peace and
knowledge and power.  To be the other means madness,
horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. 
Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one
state or the other.“
        –    C. S. Lewis
               (Mere Christianity)
 

No Comments yet

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress and Nifty Cube with Recetas theme design by Pablo Carnaghi.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS.