You Said It, C.S. Lewis!
"If I am a field that contains nothing but grass seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and resown.
That is why the real probelm of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind." - From The Joyful Christian by C. S. Lewis
Lewis writes that it is impossible to fragment your life into areas that need Jesus and areas that don't. Man needs complete, total surrender and complete, total salvation, day to day and minute by minute. He says here that following Jesus is exactly impossible to do if you are trying to merely readjust your outside-self. It is your inside-self that Jesus is interested in, and He wants to crucify it and replace its petty smallness with His own Life. In the morning, it is His voice you must listen to, His point of view you must take, and His large, strong, quiet life you must allow to consume you.
"The church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose."
Lewis's words were a timely reminder to me today...our reward as Christians is not the love of Christ, it is not His example or His principles, it is not His comfort or His legacy - our reward is Christ Himself, His indwelling presence and, soon, to actually, physically be with Him and His Father. It's the Good News, it's the central truth to Smyrna's staff and all those that Smyrna supports, and it's the point of this Universe!
