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Prayer Poem by CS Lewis

 The following is a poem written by CS Lewis on the topic of prayer: “Master, they say that when I seem     To be in speech with you, Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream   – One talker aping two.   They are half right, but not as they    Imagine; rather, I Seek in myself the things I meant to say,    And lo! the wells are dry.   Then, seeing me empty, you forsake    The Listener’s role, and through My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake    The thoughts I never knew.   And thus you neither need reply    Nor can; thus, while we seem Two talking, thou art One forever, and I    No dreamer, but thy dream.                        – C.S. Lewis, 1964 Although more reflection could easily be given to this spectacular work, I think we can find individual self-reflection may serve us better. I have given some questions below that may aid you in this search, however, just as in a Socratic discussion there are no correct/wrong answers, there are no correct questions to ask in a reflect
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Seeing God

"God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot-any god of man's idea could do that-but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all." - George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By Most people believe they have not seen God. No matter how faithful, if there is not a vision or out of body experience, we don’t think we’ve seen God. In fact, the first part of 1 John 4:12 says, “No one has seen God at any time (NET)”. And while this is a somewhat vague and easy way to describe faith, I don’t think it fully captures what seeing God means. We need to take 1 Corinthians 3:16 to heart here: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” God lives in us. When we perform Christlike actions, is that not us showing the God in us? If we have Christ living in us, then how come it is not shown at all times? People often talk about how does a god who is perfectly good create a world that has bad in it, but in real
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Complexities and the Lord

Sometimes Christians can benefit from taking the point of view of an atheist. Knowing where the other side is coming from is really important in our journey as Christians. Being the best missionary you can involves knowing where other people stand. The easiest way to be an atheist is to say: “Yeah, this world just doesn’t seem good enough to have God. Why would He create something that was bad?” This is a load of horse manure. This kind of atheist doesn’t have their own true testimony of the world, they’re just lazy. CS Lewis said in his book The Four Loves, ““ To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.” As Christians, we must be vulnerable. We are giving our hearts away and preparing them to be broken. Christianity is based on Love, so if you’re not vulnerable, you’re probably not putting yourself out there. We need to be vulnerable t
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This is Amazing Grace

You’ve heard about Grace. Whether that is from knowing someone named Grace or from reading something like St. Augustine’s Confessions, we, as Christians, hear this word constantly. We hear Grace being mentioned in our churches, by the street corner preachers, or maybe roll call in first grade, no matter where you are, you will hear Grace be mentioned. But for all this talk about Grace, it seems like we don’t always have a clear understanding of it. Is Grace just some celestial mercy, or is it earthly perpetual forgiveness. I think it has to be the former, and that being said, I predict most of us won’t experience Grace in this life. That’s not to say we won’t experience it, I just don’t think it comes in this life. Jesus himself never actually mentions grace in the Bible. However, if we look to Ephesians we see something interesting: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8 NET). We are saved by Grace. I don’t t
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Believing in Eternity

“God is eternal, not perpetual. Strictly speaking, he never forsees; He simply sees. Your ‘future’ is only an area, and only for us a special area, of His infinite Now. He sees (not remembers) your yesterday’s acts because yesterday is still ‘there’ for Him; he sees (not forsees) your tomorrows acts because He is already in tomorrow.”- CS Lewis,  The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature                 One of the biggest questions we can have as Christians is: how are my prayers answered? If you pray for rain, and a torrential downpour occurs the next day, you can easily look at past weather reports to find that the precipitation was inevitable. Some may use this evidence to say that God does not answer prayers, it was going to rain anyway. They will use the heresy-invoking word of “coincidence” to explain these events.  Although in reality, these events do not disprove God, instead they can show us that God does not operate in our realm of ti
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