August 12, 2009

• 
  “Hope for the Hobbled”
  part 2

  Lewis concludes this way:
  
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  “There is either a warning or an encouragement here for every one of us.
  

  If
  you are a nice person–if virtue comes easily to you–beware!
  Much is expected
  from those to whom much is given.
  If you mistake for your own merits what are
  really God’s gifts to you through nature,
  and if you are contented with simply
  being nice, you are still a rebel:
  and all those gifts will only make your fall
  more terrible,
  your corruption more complicated, your bad example more
  disastrous.
  The Devil was an archangel once;
  his natural gifts were as far
  above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee.

  But if you are a poor creature–

  poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some
  house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels–
  saddled, by no choice
  of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion–
  nagged day in and day out
  by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends–

  do not
  despair. He knows all about it.
  

  You are one of the poor whom He blessed.

  He
  knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive.
  

  Keep on.
  

  Do what you
  can.
  

  One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that)
  He
  will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one.
  And then you may astonish
  us all–not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school.
  

  (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last). “

  (C.S.
  Lewis, Mere Christianity pp214-215).

  As you may have guessed, there are definitely days when
  my “machine” feels like the truck in the photo,
  and I wonder if it will EVER roll properly.
  

  What great HOPE we may have in the

  God who understands; God Who through Jesus has himself
  driven one of these frail vehicles,
  

  and Who, in Love, knows intimately what we endure.

  …to abuse an old phrase,
  

  “Keep on trucking, friends!”

  (for an excellent summary of Hope, related to God, follow the link above)
  

  

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  • 2:17 pm
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