Lewis: true selflessness

Friday, February 26, 2010
Meditation:
    You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
    —James 4:4-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [God] wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. [He] wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things... When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Screwtape Letters, Macmillan, 1944, p. 73 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Grant, Lord, that I may find peace in humility. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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