Give Yourself Away Part 3

I think what strikes me is how little, not how much God is asking of us. And how readily we'd do His bidding, how thankfully and gladly we'd carry out His command, if we stopped pretending He didn't exist.

If God came in green tornado skies and spoke in a voice that made trees shake and fire appeared in a circle above you and He said, "Go listen to that hurting person for twenty minutes," you'd humbly and quietly ask Him if you should wear anything special? Maybe bring a dish? Perhaps buy the hurting person lunch? Isn't His command asking too little?

God has come to us and asked us to hold a beautiful little girl, and love her and feed her and change her diapers. And pray for her and hug her. And after a number of days he determines, He'll take her home. Sans the green skies, this sounds painful. But reminded of exactly who He is, what He knows, how He loves....

From The Screwtape Letters, Lewis' masterwork written from the perspective of one senior demon to a junior demon (so "The Enemy" is actually not The Enemy at all)....

"The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels. He is also, in theory, committed to a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded total service for even one day, he would not refuse.

"He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hoiur in that day the Enemy said 'Now you may go and amuse yourself.'

"Now, if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realize that he is actually in this situation every day. When I speak of preserving this assumption in his mind, therefore, the last thing I mean you to do is to furnish him with arguments in its defence. There aren't any.

Your task is purely negative. Dont' let his thoughts come anywhere near it. Wrap a darkness around it, and in the center of that darkness let his sense of ownership-in-Time lie silent, uninspected, and operative."