Finally back....and CS Lewis "The Great Divorce"

I have missed sharing for the last several months. November was apparently the last time I both had time and could sit in my chair to write. December found me mostly in the bed with back problems. I am thankful to be able to sit and share once again!

I have had CS Lewis' The Great Divorce on my shelf for sometime in line to read. Recently, I felt led to pick it up. I am so very glad I was blessed with the chance to read it.

The story is a dream. Only a dream. Lewis makes clear that He is not "claiming knowledge of what no mortal man knows." (chapter 14)

Having understood that, the story begins as a young man from the Grey City enters the line for the bus. The bus takes air and carries them to "another" place. After disembarking from the bus, they are each met by "bright people". The man observes encounter after encounter of the passengers as they are offered the chance to climb the mountains and press on (to heaven). I see myself and/or others (saved and lost unfortunately) in each encounter.

The first encounter is of a "moral man" (in his own estimation) who's "bright person" was a murderer on earth. He cannot imagine how the murderer could possibly be there. Says the "bright" man to the moral,

"That is a little hard to understand at first. But it is all over now. You will be pleased about it presently. Till then there is no need to bother about it."

"No need to bother about it? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"No, Not as you mean. I do not look at myself, I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began."

The "moral man" goes on and on about how good he was and how he deserves his rights because of it. The bright man responds:

"Oh no. It's not so bad as that. I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You'll get something far better. Never fear."

Another encounter deals with our thinking that as long as we live by our "honest opinions" all will be well in the end. Yet another just wants to "have a look around", our modern version of "try God" I suppose, expecting God to entertain him.

Our main character finally meets with his bright person (a rather famous one who had quite a mark on the salvation of CS Lewis). He explains that the visitor cannot understand heavenly things until he arrives there,

"That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness..."

"There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy-that is, to reality."

Several quotes I love sum up so much of what I took away from this reading.

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the things he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.


'But of course!' said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. 'That's what we all find when we reach this country. We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin to live.'


There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks at Him and bad when it turns from Him.


How very many ways we find to reject God as He is, not as we want to make Him out to be. When all along, He stands, with loving arms, ready to be all He is in us every hour of every day. I guess that is what I take away from this book. Lord, open my eyes. You are God alone!

3.1.10 Am a child or a grownup in Christ?

I read chapter 3 of Becoming a Man of Prayer today. In reading Galatians 4:1-7, I was at first not sure what the reference to a child heir verses an heir meant. I came to understand that in the first verse, a child heir is (according to the verse) similar to a slave in that they must be protected and managed until they are of age. Verse 7 says that I am, "no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." 1 Corinthians 13:11 says, "When I was a child, I spoke like child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways."

I realized I have in many ways been living as if I were still an underage child in God's presence. Yes, we know we must come to him initially with the faith of a little child, but when we are saved, we must put away childish things and grow up! I stand today before the Father a grownup daughter. I am called to a life of holiness, suffering, discipline and commitment. These are not for babies...these are for grownups.

Then, I pulled out Love to Eat, Hate to Eat. A CS Lewis quote fit in perfectly with what I feel the Lord was trying to show me.

(from Love to Eat, Hate to Eat by: Elise Fitzpatrick)
C.S. Lewis...believed that we were too easily satisfied with the "lesser joys" of life instead of pressing on to pure, full joy in Christ. He wrote, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition [and food] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

Not a Tame Lion

My favorite quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is from the conversation between Susan, Lucy and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver when they meet. Susan asks if this Aslan is quite safe because she feels she'll be rather nervous about meeting Him. Mrs. Beaver says that only a silly person could stand before Aslan without their knees knocking.

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

(This has sunk into the being that is me and often recalled. This notion is even more understood from reading Book 1 in Mere Christianity, also by Lewis, which I and a friend are reading together.)

(Thanks for indulging me :-) ) So, I said all that to say that I found a book called Not a Tame Lion which OF COURSE caught my eye!! It is a book about the Spiritual Legacy of C. S. Lewis by Terry Glaspey. (For those George Grant fans, Grant wrote the forward!!)

I love the angle of this book. It is part biography intertwined with the messages of the writings of Lewis. What a brilliant idea!

So, I'll probably comment more about this book, but I'll leave Chronicles of Narnia fans with this one fact. Did you know that Lewis and his housemates opened their home to evacuated children during the war? (just like in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe!!!) Glaspey states that this is probrably the insite it took for Lewis to be able to write such wonderful children's Literature!