"The sides rose up high above him like walls..."

Some stories you wish would just go on forever.
I finished Perelandra about an hour ago...a work of such beauty and complexity...yet such peircing, simple truth. I marvelled to Sarah last night as i rested from Chapter 14, that it wasn't something any mere man could have written...it just didn't seem possible. It's terrors, it's light...i couldn't understand...

A divine inspiration...a man blessed with a gift sent from the hand of the Lord God Himself. It is hard not to give all the glory to C.S Lewis, knowing, as we know, what sacrifice and submission of our own wills and desires it takes to allow the working of the Holy Spirit in and around our lives and in the works of our hands. In a way, we can give him praise...yet at once remembering that it was God who gave Lewis that willingness to search for truth...that disposition which made him unique in that he wasn't satisfied with acceptance of things that appealed to his fleshly, fallen state. How else could he, as a sworn atheist, have finally given credence to a doctrine that he had always ever seen as merely a crutch upon which weaker-minded men placed all their futile hopes and moronic ideals? He wanted what was right...what was pure...and not only did he find it...but he did everything he could, with the power he was given, to make sure that everyone else could find it, too.
And so i praise God...

As an artist it both inspires and weakens me...will i ever be able to come close to communicating anything worth giving real glory to Jesus? In the state i'm in...no. no no no no.

Sometimes i feel like i'm in a worse place than someone who is an atheist. I am a child of God...i know He is there i have heard His voice, felt His presence, touched His face, seen His hand...
but i am so weak. I am so unwilling...i am bound up by the devil.

And why oh why am i still able to go on every day...
Because Jesus wants me to. Because he created me to breath in the air. Because he gave me the ability to carry a tune. Because he wanted me to love the color green. Because he decided i would be 5'7 and three-quarters-of-an-inch-tall-and-no-more. Because he made me love people more than i feel they could love me. Because i'm here...because i'm alive...

Because i'm not hopeless...



"'You must cover my eyes,' he said presently; and the two human forms went out of sight for a moment and returned. Their arms were full of the rose-red lillies. Both bent down and kissed him. He saw the King's hand lifted in blessing and then never saw anything again in that world. They covered his face with the cool petals till he was blinded in a red sweet-smelling cloud."...

~Perelandra