A few lines that have spoken to me this week:
“Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it and made fit for God by that affliction.” ~John Donne
“We are told by many in our generation that this small child is a cog in a machine, or even that he is a possession, like a pet animal. Many adults now “have”a child, in the same way that they “have” a washing machine or a collie dog. We must answer: No. You are holding a person on your knee. And that is wonderful.
What sort of person is it whom are we holding? To know him we must consider the various aspects integrated into the unity which we call “this person”. Physically his little body may be vigorous and healthy, or malnourished and dejected. His mind may be alert and responsive, or it may be dulled and neglected. His emotions may be warm, trusting, affectionate, or fearful, wary and suspicious because of past hurt. His spirit may be awake to that great Lover of children, or it may be ignorant and withdrawn. Worse, he may already be bored by sawdust religious slogans. Has he been warmed at the flame of the Shepherd who has cared for him? Look well at the child on your knee. In whatever condition you find him, look with reverence. We can only love and serve him and be his friend. We cannot own him. He is not ours.” ~ Susan Schaeffer Macaulay in “For The Children’s Sake”
“There is an activity of God displayed throughout creation, a wholesale activity let us say which men refuse to recognize. The miracles done by God incarnate, living as a man in Palestine, perform the very same things as this wholesale activity, but at a different speed and on a smaller scale. One of their chief purposes is that men, having seen a thing done by personal power on the small scale, may recognize, when they see the same thing done on the large scale, that the power behind it is also personal – is indeed the very same person who lived among us two thousand years ago. The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and some are prophecies.
God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah’s time till ours, God turns water into wine. That, men fail to see.”
“When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.’ The idea of reaching “a good life” without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up “a good life” as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence. Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we shoud only perish in the ice and the unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are “done away” and the rest is a matter of flying.” ~C.S.Lewis in “The Grand Miracle”