I’ve heard about George MacDonald’s influence on CS Lewis since I first read Lewis’s corpus in my teen years. I’ve never read anything from him until just recently when a pastor friend, Al Harbour, gave me a copy of Lewis’s MacDonald anthology. Each line is rich and powerful. It’s clear how and why MacDonald influenced Lewis so profoundly. Here’s a passage which offers especially helpful advice to troubled souls [I’ve taken the liberty to modernize the language and use italics for emphasis]:
“Troubled soul, you do not have to feel anything, but you do have to get up. God loves you whether you feel anything or not. You cannot love whenever you want to, but you must fight the hatred within you to the very end.
“Don’t try to feel good when are aren’t good, but cry out to God who alone is good. God hasn’t changed just because you have changed.
“No. In fact, God has a special tenderness of love toward you who are in the dark and have no light, and God’s heart is glad when you get up and say (like the Prodigal Son), ‘I will go to my Father...’
“Fold your arms and give up on your own faith; wait in quietness until the light dawns upon your darkness.
“Fold up your arms for your own faith, but not for your action:
“Think of something you ought to do, and DO IT, even if it’s sweeping a room, or preparing a meal, or visiting a friend.
“Pay no attention to your feelings. DO YOUR WORK.”
No comments:
Post a Comment