Mere Christianity

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or maybe it was just something somebody said to you that really clicked with you? It just felt like it was exactly what you needed at that moment? Well, if you haven't I pity you and hope you can relate to what I'm going to say here.
In this particular case it was a book for me: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I wasn't exactly planning on reading it either. I just grabbed it off the shelf because we were leaving to go on a road trip and I had nothing really brilliant to read at the moment. Ha. Well, brilliant sure came along.
The first chapter that really hit me hard was the chapter on Pride (oh yay!). He says, "...the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, "How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?" The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride" (110). What got me in this particular quote was how much pride I was reading it with. In all seriousness when I started reading it I was like, "Psh. So and So should really read this. And you know what, those other people geeze. Pride commin out their lil ears." Sick. And then I got to the part with the question and I asked it to myself. It took more than a moment until I realized how even one of the most despicable sins can just become so normal, so "innocent" (in a sense) that I don't even realize it's there. I really hate it when people shove their oar in.
The next part that really hit close to home was when he said, "For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense" (112). With the situation with my Papa, saying pride is like a cancer was really quite alarming to me. I don't want that, but yet it's probably unavoidable considering that I can't even recognize my own pride. Okay, so right about here I was thinking that I probably don't want pride in my life. But, what do I want? "Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else" (154). Every Christian knows that Christ was the ultimate human example yeah yeah. But it's the second part of the quote that made it stand out to me. Being like Christ is the whole point of being a Christian. Woah. Hold on a second. I kinda enjoy the sweet things I get out of being a Christian. But that's not the point, at least not the main one. Being a Christian is worth being like Christ just in and of itself. Its not what we personally get out of believing in Christ, but just being in Christ.
"Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

Come And Find Me

If I could trace the lines that ran
Between your smile and your sleight of hand
I would guess that you put something up my sleeve
Now every time I see your face the bells ring in a far-off place
We can find each other this way I believe

From the hills and up behind, my town
is naked from the horizon down
The curvature is pressed against the raise
We walked up in the fields alone
And the silence fell just like a stone
That got lost in the wild blue and the gravel grey

Come and find me now

Though I'm here in this far off place
My air is not this time and space
I draw you close with every breath
you don't know it's right until it's wrong
You don't know it's yours until it's gone
I didn't know that it was home ‘til you up and left

Come and find me now

I keep you in a flower vase
With your fatalism and your crooked face
With the daisies and the violet brocades
And I keep me in a vacant lot
In the ivy and forget-me-nots
Hoping you will come and untangle me one of these days

Come and find me now

[Josh Ritter]