Happy Birthday, Professor Lewis!

If you haven’t read Lewis, you really, really ought to! You will be challenged and grown through the experience.   Several summers ago, Andrew and I spent all of his quiet time and any rainy day reading the Chronicles of Narnia  aloud to each other. This was my first experience with the world of Lewis and Narnia and I was enchanted and wanted more. What kind of a man and what kind of an imagination could so transport even grown-ups to such a magical place?

So I decided to read Mere Christianity as it had an important place in my family’s history. My father, who had professed in his twenties to being an atheist, had been greatly influenced by this work. You may or may not know that this book was actually first a series of radio talks Lewis gave about Christianity to the British nation during the bombing of London during WW 2. I ordered both this book and the Screwtape Letters and that was the beginning of my love affair with anything and everything Lewis.  I was captivated by Lewis’ clarity of Christian thought, the forcefulness, yet gentleness of his apologetics.   The solidness and logic of his arguments strengthened my faith as never before, but most of all, I was enamored by the eloquence and yet simplicity of his writing.  I often feel when I read Lewis that we are sitting together before a roaring English fire, drinking tea (though Lewis is smoking his pipe alternately) and having a conversation.
Well, after Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, I found Till We Have Faces at the library, which is the retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche.   This is a haunting story of the way we see ourselves verses the way we really are seen, as played out in the life of Orual, a princess who is not blessed with beauty and yet who loves her beautiful sister in an obsessive way.  She discovers in the end that she has never really loved  anyone, but herself, at all.  It is a horrifying discovery and one to which the reader is also brought to about their own life as they read Orual’s story.

Then I read The Abolition of Man, which is Lewis’ very strong views on education. He had me convinced after the second page and I am still a staunch believer in classical education.

Next, I read Surprised by Joy. This is Lewis’ autobiography and it is an interesting account of his earliest childhood memories.   What an imaginative child; his genius is apparent even at a young age!   It is also the record of his journey from atheism to Christianity, where we are given a glorious glimpse of the grace of God in Lewis’ life.

The Weight of Glory is a collection of sermons.   “The Weight of Glory” is also the title of perhaps Lewis’ most famous sermon and definitely his most quoted.   A lengthy portion of it is found in John Piper’s book Desiring God. You have probably heard it – about the child who is offered a trip to the ocean and continues to make mud pies in the alley way because he knows nothing else. This is like us; our desire for God is too weak. We are offered infinite joy in Him and yet we continue to derive our pleasure from the foolish things of this world.

I am indebted to Lewis for this book – The Problem with Pain. Lewis tackles the deep and troublesome subject of why Christians must suffer.   I read this at an important crossroads in my life and I still recall to mind some of the passages when I am going through my own share of suffering.   ” God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience , but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The Four Loves is Lewis treatment of love and relationships – family relationships, marital relationships, friendship, and charity love. This is perhaps one of my favorites because of his wise and witty insight into human nature.  “Love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god,”  is a succinct summary of the entire book and a quote from it that is worthy of some meditation.

A few Christmases ago, John bought me Lewis’ adult fantasy trilogy. Out of the Silent Planet was at first my favorite because of my child-like awe and wonder at entering another world, another planet, as well as the allegorical references to Christ.   Then I read and reread  Perelandra. Many people have compared it to Paradise Lost and I believe that is a pretty apt comparison.  Think of the Garden of Eden, but on another planet; think of temptation, yet without the Fall, and you pretty much have the plot of my favorite of the trilogy.  My least favorite is That Hideous Strength which is a frightening and cutting commentary on modernity.   I got into that one the least because it takes place in our world, which is also why it is so frightening.

Next, I came across and, of course, purchased God in the Dock, a collection of 40 something essays regarding Lewis’ thoughts on just about everything. My favorite is when Lewis talks about the ‘Grand Miracle. ‘  “…beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into his own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all the other systems of the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian left.”

One Mother’s Day, I received a book of Lewis’ poems. I must admit that As the Ruin Falls, After Prayers Lie Cold, and Love as Warm as Tears have become my all time favorite poems, although I understand that Lewis is not known nor recognized for his poetry by the literary world.   However, Lewis expresses himself in poetry exactly as Lewis expresses himself in everything he writes and this consistent, yet ever fresh and creative ability of being able to say a few things beautifully, no matter which way you choose to say them, be it a children’s fantasy or a poem is fascinating.  ” Love’s as hard as nails, Love is nails: Blunt, thick, hammered through the medial nerves of One who, having made us , knew the thing He had done, Seeing (with all that is) Our cross and His.”   There is a small taste of what I love about his poetry from Love as Warm as Tears.

Also, I received as a gift An Experiment in Criticism, a book not just about literature, but about what makes a good reader.   Lewis says that if you are not a reader (of good books) than you “inhabit a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in a prison. My eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.”   My high school literature class hears this quote repeatedly.   It sounds a bit like intellectual snobbery, but I wholeheartedly agree.   If only more people in our materialistic, post modern world could admire things, like good books, that are truly admirable, their lives would be the richer for it.  Of course, Lewis’ opinion should count for something on this subject since he was a literature professor at Oxford and then Cambridge.  Another book of literary criticism which I have found indispensable is A Preface to Paradise Lost. I doubt I would have appreciated or enjoyed Milton half as well without reading this first.  While I read this, I felt like I was one of Lewis’ students,  soaking up what must have been a series of remarkable lectures.

At some point I also read The Great Divorce – the fictional account of a man (supposed to be Lewis) who is guided on a tour of Heaven and Hell by his mentor, George MacDonald. There are some gripping moments of irrevocable decisions and scenes that vividly depict the subtle nature of good and evil.

Lastly and most recently, I read Reflections on the Psalms. Lewis treats the Psalms as poetry, which of course they are, and delves into the style of the poetry and the Jewish culture and history behind the writing of these poems.  Here is an amazing quote from this book – “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify, for in commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”  It is a fitting quote to end with, for Lewis was always echoing God’s invitation to enjoy God.  I find the invitation indelibly printed on every page of his writings.

In honor of his birthday, I hope you decide to pick up a Lewis book. You won’t regret it.

Thou it is only November, it is time to begin the Christmas song season. So for our first Christmas song of the year we select What Child is This as one of our favorites. Spend some time today thinking about the Word made flesh and have a blessed Lord’s Day.

What Child is this who, laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant, king to own Him;
The King of kings salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Raise, raise a song on high,
The virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy, joy for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

With Thanksgiving over, though the leftovers still sit in the fridge, and black Friday upon us (in fact most of the insane deals they offer at 5 am are over by now) we prepare to be besieged by the comercialized version of Christmas that the world promotes. However, as we decorate our home for the Christmas season and have the Christmas music playing all day long I think that it is most important that we remember the real reason that we celebrate this time of year, Jesus Christ. We celebrate his birth. The Word become flesh has come and dwelt among us. Consider these thoughts by Octavius Winslow on the incarnation of Christ,

“There is no other solution to the marvellous mysteries of His Incarnation and Sacrificial Death but this: Christ has loved us.

There is not a circumstance of our Lord’s history which is not another form or manifestation of love.

His incarnation is love stooping.
His sympathy is love weeping.
His compassion is love supporting.
His grace is love acting.
His teaching is the voice of love.
His silence is the repose of love.
His patience is the restraint of love.
His obedience is the labor of love.
His suffering is the travail of love.
His cross is the altar of love.
His death is the burnt offering of love.
His resurrection is the triumph of love.
His ascension into heaven is the enthronement of love.
His sitting down at the right hand of God is the intercession of love.

Such is the deep, the vast, the boundless ocean of Christ’s love!”

With these thoughts to meditate on, may you have a blessed Christmas season.

We wish all of you a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving. I love this holiday. I love the food, but I love the lack of commercialism focused on Thanksgiving, a rarity in our day and age. While, as Christians, we are to be marked by thanksgiving, I do like the markers that we have to remember and focus on certain things. Obviously, on this day each year we think of what we have to be thankful for. We often focus our giving of thanks on the tangible, the things and people that we can see and touch. We are thankful for our families or the roof over our heads or the car that works or thousands of other things. However, this Thanksgiving I want to encourage you to remember and be thankful for God, for who He is and what He has done for us in Christ. In Christ, it is overwhelming what we have to be thankful for. The greatest thing that we have to be thankful for is God himself. Let me encourage you to see God as the source, the subject, and the substance of all your thanksgiving today and everyday of your life. Before you focus on the tangible and how great it is to have those things, may you remember the God who gives every good gift. Who gives, not only life, but also new life in the gift of faith. On Tuesday night, I shared with our church this same challenge from Psalm 100,

Psalms 100:1-5 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.  (2)  Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.  (3)  Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.  (4)  Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.  (5)  For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.” But how do we enter? We enter, knowing that He is God (v 3). The God of the universe, the creator of all things. We come before His presence with thanksgiving knowing that He is the source of everything that we have to be thankful for, even the difficulties that we face. Then we see that we enter with praise, we are thankful to him, blessing His name. He is the subject of our thanksgiving (v. 4). He is the course upon which we focus as we consider all that we have to be thankful for. Lastly, we see that, not only is God the subject of our thanksgiving, but he is also the substance (v. 5). It is his character, his being, his nature that we sing songs of praise about as He is good, and His mercy and His truth endure forever.

I pray that you have a wonderful time with your family and friends with whom you celebrate today, and I pray that as we all look to be thankful today and everyday that God would be the source, subject, and substance of all our praise and thanksgiving.  Then, may we as Ray Lucas writes in his commentary on Colossians, be bursting with thanksgiving everyday of our lives. Let me leave you with this quote by Lucas to meditate on.

“To be bursting with thanksgiving is a true witness of the Spirit within us. For the voice of thanksgiving speaks without ceasing of the goodness of God. It claims nothing. It sees no merit in man’s receiving but only in God’s giving. It marvels at his mercy. It is the language of joy because it need look no longer to its own resources.

The Christian rejoicing in this blessing of a thankful heart will have his eyes fixed upon the right person and the right place, Christ at God’s right hand. He cannot be taken up with himself without being immediately reminded that everything he possesses is the gift of God.”

We have had the privilege of getting to know Lauren House over the past several years since he moved out here from New York to live with his daughter and son-in-law, Claudia and Charlie Rox, who attend our church and are members of our care-group.  Personally, Lauren coming to our church was very timely in my own life.  I had recently lost my grandfather and so I was determined  to adopt Lauren, which he was very kind about, allowing me and my family call him Grandpa.  Grandpa and I made a very quick connection, mostly because of our love for reading, and our love for reading C.S. Lewis.  I am still amazed at how much Grandpa can always recall when discussing books!  As a family, we have enjoyed having Grandpa over to our home on occasion.  The evening always ends with a game of Scrabble, a game Grandpa and his wife of many years used to play together practically every night before she passed away.  I decided as a school project to have Andrew interview Grandpa about his life and then write an essay.   -  Jessica

Lauren House’s Life

by Andrew Watson

On Friday, I got to interview Lauren House or Grandpa as we call him.  Grandpa is still a very healthy and smart man.  I want to talk about three main things that we spoke about in the interview – Grandpa’s life, growing up on a farm, and what life was like back in Grandpa’s time.

First, I want to talk about Grandpa’s life.  Grandpa was born in Uttica, NY, on July 14, 1925.  When he was born Calvin Coolidge was the president.  Grandpa has lived through fourteen presidents and he is on his fifteenth.  He attended Colgate University and Andover-Newton Seminary and then served as a minister for many, many years throughout New York and New England.  Grandpa also lived near Cooperstown when he was a boy and liked to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Secondly, I want to talk about Grandpa’s growing up on a farm.  One of the things he told me was you had to get up early every day.  I asked him about blue laws, blue laws are laws that said stores had to be closed on Sundays and no work could be done.  He said you always had to work on the farm, the cows had to be milked.  And lastly, I want to talk about what life was like in Grandpa’s time.  Something he told me totally startled me.  It was how much a loaf of bread cost.  5 Cents was the answer!  I think teachers will like this question, what was your school like?  He answered at one point that there were 4 students in the entire school in one room.

Grandpa is a very dear and close friend.  I envy one thing about him, how good he is at Scrabble.  Grandpa has lived through so many cool parts in history like WW 2, and once again I say Grandpa is the greatest gentleman I have ever known.

As you know, I am a history buff and I love hearing about some of the strange coincidences of history. As many of you may know and even remember, yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. First in our strange coincidence, is that both Alduous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died the same exact day. within minutes of each other. Especially here in America, the later two have been mostly overlooked in the past. However, Peter Kreeft has written an interesting looking book called Between Heaven and Hell in which he sets up an imaginary dialogue between the three famous people who died on the same day and who had such differing views.

We will have more on Lewis next week as we celebrate his birthday. Jess is having me build a shrine type thing that we can set up . In light of the historic event that took place in Dallas 46 years ago yesterday I thought it would be interesting to share some interesting coincidences between the two most infamous assassinations in our nation’s history, Lincoln and Kennedy. Before I begin, I am not one of those who buys in to all of these things and I also know that you could do the same types of things for many people. Now that I have that out in the open enjoy reading some of these strange coincidences.

• Both Lincoln and Kennedy were concerned with civil rights
• Both lost children through death while in the White house
• Lincoln was elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960
• Both were slain on a Friday and in the presence of their wives
• Both were shot from behind and in the head
• Lincoln’s secretary, named Kennedy advised him not to go to the theater
• Kennedy’s secretary, named Lincoln advised him not to go to Dallas
• Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater, Kennedy was shot in a car made by Ford
• Both had Vice-Presidents named Johnson
• Both Vice-Presidents were southerners and former Senators
• Andrew Johnson was born in 1808 and Lyndon Johnson in 1908
• John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939
• Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled to a warehouse (not actually, it was a barn)
• Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater
• Both assassins were killed before being brought to trial.

The list could go on with more and more meaningless facts that we can connect to both cases, but since you have read this far already, I feel that I can’t waste any more of your time, have a great day.

Healthcare reform is the big topic in politics and a while back while trying to catch up on what was going on in the debate I came across this video and was reminded of why our hope and trust must be in God and not in government. In light of a recent video we posted, I almost titled this, “The Government Can’t.”

Watch almost to the end, when Republican minority leader Boehner claims to quote the preamble of the Constitution, but in fact quotes the Declaration of Independence (notice the people in the background mouthing the words along with him).

Praise God, He is in charge! Forgive me, I know it is just a human slip up, but I couldn’t resist having a little fun. I know that we could find similar material on many members of Congress from both sides, I am not picking sides. In all seriousness, It concerns me whenever politics is the topic, especially among Christians, as there can be lots of ramped up emotion and sentiment that comes out from people on both sides. Both liberals and conservatives believe they are right and only they are right. Sadly, this is often how many Christians behave. Many Christians in the circles in which I grew up were stuanch supporters of the Conservative right and the Republican party as if they could do no wrong. Often going to the same extremes as their liberal opponents when it came to their devotion and support. I began to follow suit until a couple things happened. The first was a guest speaker that we had in my college government course. He was a Christian and a professor at Clemson University that taught a profound principle that I still apply today, “When voting, cast your vote for the lesser of two evils.” That was profoundly helpful to see that neither side was right all the time, and that in fact, both sides were often both wrong most of the time. That is not to say that every politician is completely corrupt or immoral, but when placing our hopes and trust in the government, we need to remember original sin. As Tim Keller also says, just once wouldn’t you love to hear a politician admit that he doesn’t have all the answers? The second thing was a book by Cal Thomas called Blinded by Might which speaks of the religious rights involvement in politics in the late 70’s and into the 80’s. It was an eye opening assessment of the movement from one who was initially involved. We must remember that our hope rests in God alone, not our government, a good thing as the video above demonstrates. God is in control and all that happens is part of his providential care and sovereignty over all events. This is why my life can go on when the person I may have voted for doesn’t win. This is also why I pray for our leaders today. Government is not the solution. We are not the solution. God provided the solution we need in Jesus Christ. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating that we don’t get involved or that we don’t vote. As Christians, there are definitely issues that need to concern us greatly. There are definitely absolutes that are being attacked in our culture and in regards to those issues we definitely have to carefully consider how we vote. My point is that we must realize that no matter how we vote, we do not put our trust in who we voted for; rather we put our trust in Him who raises up one king while setting down another. I like how Tim Keller expresses it in the Prodigal God, “The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism. Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles–it is something else altogether…In it’s [the gospel] view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change.”

I just wanted to give some attention to a new blog that has just started up. It is called, “The Grace Race,” and it is put out by my Father-in-law. It is about,

“The Grace Race is based on Hebrews 12:1 which encourages us to “run with patience the race that is set before us.” As believers, we must keep going with a forward perspective. Yet, we must always be aware that we keep going by the grace of God. His grace is truly sufficient. He is absolutely faithful. We must rest in the sufficiency of His grace; we must run the race in the sufficiency of His grace. The goal of this blog is to magnify Christ by continually pointing to His grace. While He does not do the running for us, it is only by His grace alone that we run.”

Let me encourage you to check it out, you can find it here, gracerace.wordpress.com. You can also find it listed with the sites we like.

Andrew is involved in a Christmas program with our church school this December in which his grade is singing part of this song, “Matthew Begats” written by Andrew Peterson. It is a fun song based on the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel. If you have never heard it, watch this video of Andrew Peterson singing the song himself. After you enjoy the song the first time, listen to it again and think of the awesomeness of God’s grace and love as you hear the names that are included in the line that leads to Christ.