Dear one,
Last evening we had the opportunity to view The Most Reluctant Convert, the FPA movie presentation of C.S. Lewis’ life, and especially of his conversion. From my perspective, the movie was well done, and I in fact was deeply moved, even though what I heard and saw was nothing new. That stated, years ago I observed, contrary to our American appetite for “the new,” that what is “new” often is not, and that “the old” sometimes startles, becoming fresh and therefore “new.”
Regarding last night, I recalled afresh how indebted I am to Lewis—to his writings—a debt that began when my father read to us The Screwtape Letters as a breakfast devotional: I was seven or eight years old. That debt increased when I read Miracles and The Problem of Pain: I was eighteen or nineteen; and then when I was twenty and ministering in South Africa, I was introduced to The Chronicles of Narnia. The debt now compounded astronomically. Thereafter I sought to read everything he had written, decades passing before I began to grasp Till We Have Faces.
Following our viewing The Most Reluctant Convert, I thought: Oh! he was a very broken man, but through the decades that broken man has spoken to me in my own brokenness—a brokenness evident when I was twenty. It was there, I just couldn’t see it … but I’m not who I was.
Now my intent here is not to promote Lewis, nor is it simply to reflect upon my own life, except to the extent that it exemplifies progress. That is, I have lived sufficiently long enough to observe that life, and particularly the Christian life, is characterized by progressive growth—which requires time. Certainly the natural world provides ample illustration: my favorite trees are the sequoias of California, and especially that magnificent, towering General Sherman, estimated to be 2300-2700 years old, 275feet tall, and 36feet in diameter. Progress or growth requires time.
Jesus spoke to this very reality: “The kingdom of God is as if someone scatters seed upon the earth, and sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head” (Mark 4:26-28). The Christian faith is very much this phenomenon: often growth occurs in ways we neither understand nor see—nonetheless growth occurs.
Years ago we would encourage: Be patient with me; God is not yet done.
Hmm …,
Stan
Growing?