Today's Reading
On God
As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied /with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son.
In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”
I think () [every
one //who has some vague belief in God], until he becomes a Christian,
has
the idea of an exam or of a bargain in his mind.
The first result of
real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.
When they find it
blown into bits, some people think () this means that Christianity is a
failure and give up.
They seem to imagine that God is very
simple-minded!
In fact, of course, He knows all about this.
[One of the
very things () Christianity was designed to do] was to blow this idea to
bits.
God has been waiting for the moment //at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark /in this exam or putting Him in your debt.
* to be in someone's debt means to owe something to someone.
Then comes another discovery.
Every faculty () you
have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to
moment,
is given you by God.
* definition of faculty. a natural ability for a particular kind of action:
If you devoted every moment of your whole
life /exclusively to His service
you could not give Him anything //that was
not in a sense His own already.
So that when we talk of a man /doing
anything for God or giving anything to God,
I will tell you [what it is
really like].
It is like a small child /going to his father and saying,
“Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.”
Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present.
It is all very nice and proper,
but only an idiot would think that the father is
sixpence to the good on the transaction.
When a man has made these two
discoveries
God can really get to work.
It is after this that real life begins.
* these two discoveries;
1. there is no question of earning a pass mark /in this exam or putting Him in your debt.
2. [Every faculty (that) you have] is given you by God.
From Mere Christianity
Compiled in Words to Live By
Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.