C. S. Lewis...

Today's reading was titled, "Being Good." This is what Jack* had to say:

"[T]he Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good.  They [the other people] hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or--if they think there is not--at least they hope to deserve approval from good men.  But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him.  He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us..." (emphasis added)

~From Mere Christianity**

I love this point.  It goes to the heart of the oft-repeated excuse, "I need to straighten my life out before I try to get saved."  My advise to those people is this, You cannot straighten your life out until you get saved.  Indeed, God is the one who does it then, not you.  God is waiting patiently for you to call on him, so that he can straighten your life out and, as Jack says, make you good.

* He was called Jack from the time he was a toddler, so I call him that too : )

**This is an amazing book, and I'd urge every person--Christian or not--to read it.

C.S. Lewis Quote of the Day

For Christmas, I recieved a book called A Year with C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. I am a huge fan of his, and I've been reading it dutifully everyday, sometimes twice.  Now and then I come across really great lines.  Jack (that's what his friends called him) certainly had a way with words (that may be the understatement of the century).  I thought I'd share the particularly good nuggets here...

"What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven..." ~C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I would think, anyone who has raised a child through the toddler years can chuckle at the picture these words create, while realizing the somber truth of them as well.  Conviction certainly goes down easier with a spoonful of humor.