From those wiser...
My best friend just shared the following quote with me...she came across it on the the Boundless homepage (but it may be gone from there now...they change the quote every so often!).
"Heaven is not here, it's there. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next." ~Elisabeth Elliot
While reading today, I also came across some good quotes and they (at least the first one) kind of tie into the one I just shared. At my mom's suggestion, I've been re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. The first time I read it was for school and for some reason, though being good, it just seemed kind of dry reading to me (if you know what I mean!). This last time I started it, I felt the same way, so about half way through I took a break from getting through my "stack" (books I have to finish reading before I'll allow myself to buy any more books!) of which this book was a part of. So after re-reading a couple of L.M. Montgomery books, a few days ago I started back at Mere Christianity and was amazed...it's a great book! I'm not yet finished with it, but thought I'd share a couple of gems of wisdom from what I read today....
"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food...If I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world....Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same." (emphasis mine)
"To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He [Christ] says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you." (emphasis mine)
"In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc. is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblence to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblence there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
"And this precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." (emphasis mine)
"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ..." ~Phil. 3:20
"Heaven is not here, it's there. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next." ~Elisabeth Elliot
While reading today, I also came across some good quotes and they (at least the first one) kind of tie into the one I just shared. At my mom's suggestion, I've been re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. The first time I read it was for school and for some reason, though being good, it just seemed kind of dry reading to me (if you know what I mean!). This last time I started it, I felt the same way, so about half way through I took a break from getting through my "stack" (books I have to finish reading before I'll allow myself to buy any more books!) of which this book was a part of. So after re-reading a couple of L.M. Montgomery books, a few days ago I started back at Mere Christianity and was amazed...it's a great book! I'm not yet finished with it, but thought I'd share a couple of gems of wisdom from what I read today....
"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food...If I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world....Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same." (emphasis mine)
"To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He [Christ] says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you." (emphasis mine)
"In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc. is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblence to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblence there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
"And this precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." (emphasis mine)
"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ..." ~Phil. 3:20