PART SEVEN: Reason to Hope
PART SEVEN
When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.
Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis
This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again … God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.
Mere Christianity
Life at a vile boarding school is in this way a good preparation for the Christian life, in that it teaches one to live by hope.
Surprised by Joy
Look for the valleys, the green places, and fly through them. There will always be a way through.
The Magician's Nephew
You must ask for God's help … After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.
Mere Christianity
It is not your business to succeed, but to do right; when you have done so, the rest lies with God.
Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis
Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair.
The Joyful Christian
The Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.
The Screwtape Letters
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.
Mere Christianity
Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.
On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears. Take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else. That can come later, if it must come at all. (And notice here how the true training for anything whatever that is good always prefigures and, if submitted to, will always help us in, the true training for the Christian life.)
Surprised by Joy
A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered.
Out of the Silent Planet
Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed him.
Perelandra
Who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words ‘compelle intrare,’ compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
Surprised by Joy
‘You have a traitor there, Aslan,’ said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he'd been through and after the talk he'd had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn't seem to matter what the Witch said.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Now we cannot … discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I can't.’
Mere Christianity
No good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights.
Reflections on the Psalms
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.
Mere Christianity
There is a dignity and poignancy in the bare fact that a thing exists.
The Weight of Glory
Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.
Mere Christianity
But only the strange power
Of unsought Beauty in some casual hour
Can build a bridge of light or sound or form
To lead you out of all this strife and storm …
One moment was enough,
We know we are not made of mortal stuff.
And we can bear all trials that come after,
The hate of men and the fool's loud bestial laughter
And nature's rule and cruelties unclean,
For we have seen the Glory—we have seen.
Spirits in Bondage
The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter of daily and hourly experience. As intimate as breathing.
Miracles
Our real journey to God involves constantly turning our backs on [nature]; passing from the dawn-lit fields into some poky little church … But the love of her has been a valuable and, for some people, an indispensable initiation.
The Four Loves
Nowadays it seems to be so forgotten that people think they have somewhat discredited Our Lord if they can show that some pre-Christian document … such as the Dead Sea Scrolls has ‘anticipated’ Him. As if we supposed Him to be a cheapjack like Nietzsche inventing a new ethics! Every good teacher, within Judaism as without, has anticipated Him. The whole religious history of the pre-Christian world, on its better side, anticipates Him. It could not be otherwise. The Light which has lightened every man from the beginning may shine more clearly but cannot change. The Origin cannot suddenly start being, in the popular sense of the word, ‘original’.
Reflections on the Psalms
Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
The Great Divorce
‘You Come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.’
Prince Caspian