Need
[No, we weren't without Internet for this long...it was about a week and then life continued to happen at a rather crazy pace...thusly, no blogging until now. And really, this probably couldn't even be considered real "blogging"...since most of it is quoting others...]
Recently, through things happening in my life and through conversations had with others, I'm becoming more and more aware of how desperately I need God...all the time. He is everything and without Him, I am and have nothing. All I really have to "offer" Him is my desperate need for Him. It reminded me of a quote from C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves...
[Speaking of how every human's love for God is a "Need-love"] "But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing - for it ought to be growing - awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose."
Yes...I certainly am just "one vast need"...desperately wanting to be untied and tied up.
I posted that quote on my blog quite a few months back, after I had finished reading The Four Loves...and with it I posted several other quotes from that excellent book. Tonight, when copying the "vast need" quote, I saw another one of my favourite Lewis quotes and it seemed to relate here...
"Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delightful acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become 'jolly beggars'. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet - or one foot - or one toe - on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumbles in the surf."
"Total dependence"...that's exactly what it is. Tumbles in the surf are wonderful, but first you have to give up any control (or illusion of control) of our own strength...and throw yourself entirely upon His mercy. And it will be glorious...
"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." ~John 15:5
Recently, through things happening in my life and through conversations had with others, I'm becoming more and more aware of how desperately I need God...all the time. He is everything and without Him, I am and have nothing. All I really have to "offer" Him is my desperate need for Him. It reminded me of a quote from C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves...
[Speaking of how every human's love for God is a "Need-love"] "But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing - for it ought to be growing - awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose."
Yes...I certainly am just "one vast need"...desperately wanting to be untied and tied up.
I posted that quote on my blog quite a few months back, after I had finished reading The Four Loves...and with it I posted several other quotes from that excellent book. Tonight, when copying the "vast need" quote, I saw another one of my favourite Lewis quotes and it seemed to relate here...
"Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delightful acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become 'jolly beggars'. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet - or one foot - or one toe - on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumbles in the surf."
"Total dependence"...that's exactly what it is. Tumbles in the surf are wonderful, but first you have to give up any control (or illusion of control) of our own strength...and throw yourself entirely upon His mercy. And it will be glorious...
"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." ~John 15:5