Good morning to you, friends. Here is our quote for the day – by C.S. Lewis, writing in Mere Christianity in 1952.
The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.
We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible. 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.
And here are a few items of interest from around the web.
- Two companion articles from the January edition of First Things: The Politics of Abortion after Obama, by Joseph Bottum, and The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s by Richard John Neuhaus.
- John McWhorter writes in Books & Culture on A Shambling Magnificence: How the English Language Evolved.
- At GetReligion, Terry Mattingly summarizes the patterns of religious top ten lists in the media.
- Fred Harburg, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, writes on their website on Self-Interest and Integrity.
As a regular part of our schedule here at Civitate, we link to items of interest around the Christian and academic blogosphere. If you would like to submit a link for consideration, feel free to contact us at thecity [at] hbu.edu.
You must log in to post a comment.