| long time no xanga.. are you still alive my dear blog?
as you see me as i write so much has happened, and is still happening, yet not enough has happened it feels. i am so different yet so same. so much of me have grown it feels like yet i still get so shamefully agitated whenever i come across my the tiny winy peanut sized heart.
thesedays, im so captivated by C.S Lewis' literature. youd might be glad to know im onto his book whenever i find my bum sitted down somewhere. He has brought me to the whole new perspective of things with such gentle, witty persuasion that is so sharp, it arouses my thoughts beyond my control yet it jolly does keep my mouth wide shut as i see more of my completely frantic vulnerability and smallness before God, before saints, before all those people quietly sturbonely working their way to God. trust me! i am by no means attempting to sound poetic, intelligent, profound, spiritual or whatever adjectives you might throw at me. i realise i cant and there is no need, if i ever do put on that pretentious face of mine for whatever fear it might be for, you would soon know its all giberrish, feel free kick me in the ass and shake me head to toe, i cant trust myself enough to promise that i wont do it ever again.
wish id be able to tell the very all,, wish id know what i tell,, wish id be ok not knowing,,er God, wish i could be child-like for you. help me to just be not do. i do realise i dont really,,,need,, much. you are right God. Forgive me of my strenuous effort to understand and think my way out of this deal i thought you wanted from me. Forgive me for thinking wrongly about you and most of all not trusting.
all i ever want for christmas, is you,, it should be you and i want more of my desire to be wanting you.
An extract from The New Man by C.S Lewis
Already the new men are dotted here and
there all over the earth. Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly
recognisable: but others can be recognised. Every now and then one meets them.
Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter,
happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say,
recognisable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like
the idea of “religious people” which you
have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to
themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are
really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need
you less. They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where
it comes from. When you have recognised one of the, you will recognise the next
one much more easily.
The more we get what we now call
“ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves
we become. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is
no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to
love on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing
and surroundings and nature desires. In fact what I so proudly call ‘myself’
becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and
which I cannot stop. What I call ‘my wishes’ become merely the desires thrown
up by my physical organisms or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even
suggested to me by devils. At the beginning, I said there were
personalities of God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities
anywhere else. Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not
have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men,
not among those who surrender to Christ.
But there must be a real giving up of the
self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you
a real personality: but you must go to Him for the sake of that. As long as
your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him
at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your
real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours and yours just because it is
His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are
looking for Him.
Lose your life and you will save it. Submit
to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of
your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will
find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will
ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from
the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred,
loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will
find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
Now if I may put it that way, Our Lord is
like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell. Dozens of
people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed
of. Well, He will cure it all right: but He will not stop there. That may be
all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you the full
treatment.
That is why He warned people to “count the
cost” before becoming Christians. “if
you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in my hands,
that si what you are in for. Nothing less, or other than that. You have free
will and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away,
understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may
cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost
you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest,
until you are literally perfect-until my Father can say without reservation
that He is will please with you, as He said He was well pleased with him. This
I can do and will do.”
And yet-this is the other and equally
important side of it-this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with
nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first
feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty.
That is why we must not be surprised if we
are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on
pretty well, he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly
smoothly. When troubles come along-illnesses, money troubles, new kind of
temptation-he is disappointed. These things, he feels might have been necessary
to rouse him and make him repent in his sins he had old days; but why now? Because God
is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where
he will have bravery much braver, or more patient, or more loving that he
ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is
because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing he
means to make of us. This process will be long and in parts very painful; but
that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said. |
