Tag: C.S. Lewis

Lenten Reflection–Be Hatched

barnstormingblog1 Comment

photo by Josh Scholten

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
C.S.Lewis

There is certain comfort in incubating in the nest, snuggled warm under a fluffy breast, satisfied with the status quo. I tend toward perpetual nesting myself, preferring home to travel, too easily contented with the familiar rather than stretching into uncharted territory.

But eventually the unhatched egg gets the boot, even by its parents. When there are no signs of life, no twitches and wiggles and movement inside, it is doomed to rot. And we all know nothing is worse than a rotten egg. Nothing.

So we must chip away and crack open our comfy shell, leaving the fragments behind. Feeble, weak and totally dependent on the grace of others to feed and protect us, we are freed of the confinement of the sterility of the commonplace and loosed upon an unsuspecting world.

Eventually we will fly, the wind under our wings.

photo by Josh Scholten

Lenten Reflection–The Gradual Descent

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

photo by Josh Scholten

It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge one away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
C.S.Lewis in “The Screwtape Letters”
I recall a Twilight Zone episode long ago written by Earl Hamner, Jr. (who later went on to write “The Waltons”) about a back woods hunter and his coon dog who drowned pursuing a raccoon one fateful evening. The next day they found themselves lying alongside the pond, and set down a trail looking for the way back home. The trail took them to an entrance gate where the friendly gatekeeper welcomed the old hunter in but refused to allow the dog (who would have smelled the brimstone far beyond the gate). The hunter refused to enter without his dog so they continued down a long long path that seemed far less traveled.

Eventually they were found by a messenger who was looking for them, and who led them on up the road to paradise–coon hunting and square dances every night. They were told, “You see, a man, well, he’ll walk right into Hell with both eyes open. But even the Devil can’t fool a dog!”

As a child, I remember thinking how quickly I would have been lured in the wrong gate, choosing the easy way rather than seeking the longer way of the harder path that would lead to heaven.

Each step, every day, takes me closer. The path itself may not be an easy one, but it was never meant to be. I hope it won’t take a dog to help me know which way to go.

Lenten Reflection–Part of the Promise

barnstormingblog1 Comment
Mourning by Umberto Boccioni

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
C.S. Lewis ~~writing on suffering

The assumption on the part of some is that life comes with a “no pain” guarantee. Anyone who has experienced or witnessed childbirth knows better. It all starts out with a push and a cry, not exactly the most comfortable moments for mother or baby. No one escapes suffering, no matter how strongly they believe in God. It is what we signed up for once we exited our mother’s womb.

How could an all-powerful all-knowing God allow suffering, especially in innocent children? This is a standard argument used against the existence of God. The reasoning is that there is abundant suffering in the world so therefore no God in control. Somehow the gospel reality is set aside: God allowed His own suffering and experienced real pain in order to defeat death on our behalf and to ensure an eternal union with Him.

He mourned. He wept. He hurt. He bled. He died. Just like us.

What all powerful all knowing God would do that? Our God would, because He is first and foremost a loving God who makes imperfection perfect again.

No, there isn’t a “no pain” guarantee –neither God nor even the natural world ever promised that. But only our God promises “no stain” –that we are washed clean for eternity by the blood He shed in suffering.

For that is our greatest comfort of all.

For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:5

Called to Advent–following

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
photo by Josh Scholten

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
Luke 9:56-58


…we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on … to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
C.S. Lewis–in The Grand Miracle, God in the Dock

A manger was at least a place for a newborn baby to lay His head, which was more than He had later in life. A stable was not first class accommodations by any means, but it was most fitting for God’s Son, come to live alongside us in grime and poverty. The cost of following Him is to dwell with Him to reach out to the fearful and anxious, the hungry and thirsty, the down and out, the sick and miserable, the homeless and helpless–at times we are all of those ourselves.

The corner from winter to spring is turned with the Incarnation and whether we stay or follow is up to us. At the very least, we should offer Him a place to lay His head instead of turning Him away with excuses of “no room”. There is plenty of empty space for Him to dwell, right within our hollow hearts.

Called to Advent–sowing

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

photo by Nate Gibson

Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.
Ecclesiastes 11:6

Sowing and sown. We become sower, soil and seed, as well as fertilizer, harvester, storage manager and consumer. We become farmers when it comes to the planting, feeding and watering of the Word in fertile hearts and minds.

It’s what you sow that multiplies, not what you keep in the barn.
Adrian Rogers

The almost impossibly hard thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is remain what we call “ourselves” – our personal happiness centered on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, despite this, to behave honestly, and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you cannot do. If I am a grass field – all the cutting will keep the grass field less but won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat…I must be plowed up and re-sown.
C.S. Lewis – Essay on “Is Christianity Hard or Easy?”

Called to Advent–Glorifying

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Orion Nebula


Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Luke 2:20

Over the last twenty four hours I’ve had the privilege to both sing in and listen to three chorale concerts of sacred music celebrating advent and the incarnation. Our earthly voices, sincere as they are, are only a mere echo of the angel chorus that rang out over the fields glorifying the birth of Jesus. We can’t begin to imagine what that sounded like.

During our time on earth, we have no greater purpose than to glorify God with our hearts, words and voices–the Father for the life He breathed in us, the Son for the life He gave up for us, and the Spirit for the new life given to us. We appreciate and admire Him, we adore and revere Him, we give our affection and love to him, and we dedicate our lives to His service.

Most of all, we enjoy Him for the joy He brings to all people. And we will sing out, like the shepherds did after all the things they had heard and seen. We have heard and seen even more than they.


In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
C.S. Lewis

The aim of God in creating and redeeming us is the delight He Himself enjoys in seeing His creatures delight in Him. As Jonathan Edwards said, “[The] glorifying of God is nothing but rejoicing in the manifestations of Him.” In other words, the purpose of the knowledge of God is the enjoyment of God because “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.”
John Piper

Called By Advent–Calling

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Leonardo Da Vinci's Hand of John the Baptist


A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD ; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Isaiah 40:3

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.
C.S. Lewis in The Silver Chair

We think of our “calling” as an almost mystical sense of what we are meant to do or become. God calls us by name and dwells with us and among us. It is an irresistible invitation to share with others. So we are called to calling.

Our voices cry out in loneliness, in fear, in gratitude, in joy.

We have heard His voice and become His echo on earth.


Since no man is excluded from calling upon God the gate of salvation is open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering, but our own unbelief.
John Calvin

The Rhythm of Remembrance

barnstormingblog2 Comments
Vietnam Women Veteran's Memorial

“For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being.”
C.S. Lewis

I’m unsure why the United States does not call November 11 Remembrance Day as the rest of the Commonwealth nations did after WWI. This is a day that demands much more than the more passive name Veterans’ Day represents.

This day calls all citizens who appreciate their freedoms to stop what they are doing and disrupt the routine rhythm of their lives. We are to remember in humble thankfulness the generations of military veterans who sacrificed time, resources, sometimes health and well being, and too often their lives in answering the call to defend their countries.

Remembrance means never forgetting what it costs to defend freedom. It means acknowledging the millions who have given of themselves and continue to do so on our behalf. It means never ceasing to care. It means a commitment to provide resources needed for the military to remain strong. It means unending prayers for safe return home to family. It means we hold these men and women close in our hearts, always teaching the next generation about the sacrifices they made.

Most of all, it means being willing to become the sacrifice if called.

An Advent Tapestry–What is Coming Behind the Crocus

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

“This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on. Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.

…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that.  Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.  A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’  in the same spirit in which he says ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.  There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can.  We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.

It remains with us whether to follow or not,  to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.”

—C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”

An Advent Tapestry–Our Hearts Are Restless

barnstormingblog1 Comment
The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel)

Everlasting God,
in whom we live and move and have our being:
You have made us for yourself,
so that our hearts are restless
until they rest in you.
—Augustine of Hippo

Advent is a time when I feel an “inconsolable longing”,  as C.S. Lewis describes it.  He describes “the stab, the pang” accompanying the experience of Joy.  I do feel it, in a powerfully visceral way, within my chest, within the rhythm of my heart.  The restlessness drives me to seek rest, and that takes me to right where I belong,  in the quiet sanctuary of the manger, to be quieted and swaddled alongside the Son of God.