About love - Some quotes by C. S. Lewis

 

“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

“Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how "fear" of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by "love" of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

 

“Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as "Careful! This might lead you to suffering."

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less. And who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground-- because the security (so to speak) is better? Who could even include it among the grounds for loving?”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

“He has impressed upon our natures or states—must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

“Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-deception, and self-pity are not abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney. For whom, in Heaven's name, would describe as natural or normal any man from whom these failings were wholly absent? 'Natural,' if you like, in a quite different sense; arch natural, unfallen. We have only seen one such Man. And he was not at all like the psychologist's picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can't really be 'well adjusted' to your world if it says, 'you have a devil' and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

“Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing—for it ought to be growing—awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

“The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Contrast

Yesterday I was thinking about the faith-life I have compared to other saints throughout history. I thought of my battles compared to theirs. I thought about the small things that defeat me while they were unmovable in their resolve. I thought with shame about my sense of entitlement to everything going fantastic in this world. Then, like most days I thought about my grandmother.

She was born in 1936 so she ended up living as a child through the awfulness of WW2. Then came communism, and before I go off on a rant about exactly what I think of socialism in all its forms and risk sounding more like a mad person than a child of God, I’ll let the reader (if interested) google about the ‘utopia’ communism was in Romania.

It was a time when Protestant believers met in secret in all kind of obscure places for fear of torture and imprisonment that my grandmother got saved. Not because the idea of Christ helping her here and there was appealing; not for good luck or some misplaced notion of health and happiness but because she was a sinner in need of a Saviour. As a result, everybody shunned her. Even her baptism happened during the night in secret so to not endanger the brother performing the baptism. She got the “lovely stigma” that all born again believers receive in Romania, “pocait” meaning repenter which is a mocking title. But she never looked back. I have so many stories of all she suffered that I’d need to write a book in order to do it justice. Since the moment she knew of my existence, yet unborn, she carried me in her prayers, as she did for all her family. By the time I was old enough to understand, I have learned her prayers by heart. Every morning and every evening she would be in prayer for more than an hour because she needed to petition The Lord on behalf of everyone she knew, friend or foe, and the last 15 minutes or so were for her brotherhood all over the world, the Church of Jesus Christ.

She was entrusted a treasure and she was told to hold on to it and never look back but keep on going and that’s what she did. Tiny, unknown step, after tiny, unknown step. Faithfully keeping her eyes fixed on Jesus and not turning aside either to the right or to the left. And just like her were a great many others, unknown and unseen. Some have died horrible deaths in prisons. Others have lived to tell their tale. Others have died with no one even thinking that their story mattered. People of whom this world was unworthy. But they kept the faith and fought the good fight until the very end.

And then there’s me… If I lost the bus, “Lord, where are You? Why is this happening to me?”. If someone says an unkind word, “Lord, I never want to see them again, how dare they?”. If somehow, I’m unnoticed when it should have been perfectly obvious that I deserved some credit, “Lord, the injustice!”. If I faithfully prayed for a few months for something and there’s no change, on contrary, things got worse, “Lord, do You even hear me? Do You not care that I perish?” …

While I was writing I remembered someone mentioning Richard Cameron’s father. Richard had been martyred in Scotland in 1680. After his executioners cut off his head and hands, they took them to his father who had also been imprisoned for the same cause. In order to torment him even more they showed him his son’s head and hands and asked if he recognized them. The father kissed them and said, “I know — I know them; they are my son's — my own dear son's. It is the Lord — good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.” (John Howie, The Scots Worthies, 1781, SWRB reprint, 1997, pp. 428–429).

Those that place their faith in Jesus Christ and look to His sacrifice for their justification, don’t follow Him because they have their wishes come true. They don’t follow because they get some special treatment on earth. They follow because God in His mercy has opened their eyes to see that they are sinners facing a Holy God and nothing they can do on this earth can pay for the offense their sin caused God’s holiness. A guilt that was worthy of death. They follow because they heard that Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, came to pay with His life the debt of anyone who trusts in Him by faith. They follow Him because He’s worthy.

 “If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)

 

“Father, what I do not know, teach me;

What I have not; give me,

What I am not, kindly make me,

For Your Son’s sake. Amen"

Make me a captive, Lord,

And then I shall be free.

Force me to render up my sword

And I shall conqueror be.

I sink in life's alarms

When by myself I stand;

Imprison me within thine arms,

And strong shall be my hand.

 

 My heart is weak and poor

Until it master find;

It has no spring of action sure,

It varies with the wind.

It cannot freely move

Till thou hast wrought its chain;

Enslave it with thy matchless love,

And deathless it shall reign.

 

My pow'r is faint and low

Till I have learned to serve;

It lacks the needed fire to glow,

It lacks the breeze to nerve.

It cannot drive the world

Until itself be driv'n;

Its flag can only be unfurled

When thou shalt breathe from heav'n.

 

My will is not my own

Till thou hast made it thine;

If it would reach a monarch's throne,

It must its crown resign.

It only stands unbent

Amid the clashing strife

When on thy bosom it has leant,

And found in thee its life. (Author: George Matheson 1890) 

by Cristina Pop