Mere Christianity

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

C.S. Lewis is brilliant. I've been reading "Mere Christianity" and can't put it down. He articulates so well what I cannot. He writes:

A car is made to run on petrol, and 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....God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. (pg. 50)

I love that paragraph. It's such a reminder that the worldly things I strive for will never satisfy. The relationship I have with the Lord is the only thing that will ever quench my thirst. I was always told growing up that there is a God shaped hole in our hearts that only He can fill. We can try and fill that hole with money, relationships, achievements, but in the end it is only He that will make our heart whole again.

Earlier in my reading I stumbled across another paragraph that stirred conviction in my heart. Lewis claims:

There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. (pg. 48)

Too often I find myself making decisions on my own, based on my wants and selfish desires. How can I argue against the one who created me? I don't think I would ever blatantly say, "I don't care what you say God, I want it to be my way." But what I don't realize is that I declare that very statement with my actions.

Lord help me to be more like you....