#Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[martyschoenleber]

C.S. Lewis Invites Us into the Lord's Prayer

Today, the July letter from the C.S. Lewis Institute arrived. I’m going to quote it at some length because the excerpt from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer is On Helpful is so helpful. But before I do, I want to provide a link to an index for the book that readers might find helpful as well. This particular index is good for all 124 page versions of the book no matter what the cover. Lewis…

[rose1water]

“To forgive for the moment is not difficult. But to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offense again every time it recurs to the memory- there lies the real struggle.”

— C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[ioannemos]

also picked up three nonfiction books by c. s. lewis: the weight of glory, the abolition of man, and letters to malcolm: chiefly on prayer

[apenitentialprayer]

[A Christian] is always fighting on at least two fronts [concerning the relation of God with creation]. When one is among Pantheists one must emphasize the distinctiveness, and relative independence, of the creatures. Among Deists —or perhaps in Woolwich, if the laity there really think God is to be sought in the sky— one must emphasize the divine presence in my neighbour, my dog, my cabbage-patch.

C.S. Lewis (Letters to Malcolm — Chiefly on Prayer, page 99)

[castyourline]

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.”

⏤ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[likohno]

'Thy will be done.' But a great deal of it is to be done by God's creatures; including me. The petition, then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God's will, but also that I may vigorously do it.

C.S. Lewis // Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[mereinkling]

C.S. Lewis, Liturgy & a Dash of Theology

C.S. Lewis wrote: “There is no subject in the world (always excepting sport) on which I have less to say than liturgiology” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). In Christian usage, the word “liturgy” – derived from leitourgia, and translated “work of the people” or “work for the people” – corresponds to the public worship service. For some, “liturgy” is regarded as a negative word. It may…

[byfaithmedia]

Imagine sitting at a table near C.S. Lewis and overhearing his conversations about prayer with his close friend. What you hear is not systemic theology, but observation, questions and revealing insights into Lewis’ mind, and devotional life.

[jdgo51]

Reflections on Psalms

Today's inspiration comes from:

The C. S. Lewis Bible

by C. S. Lewis

Praise Befits the Humble

"'But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.

— from Reflections on the Psalms

For Reflection: Psalm 33:1-22

Taste and See

William Law remarks that people are merely “amusing themselves” by asking for the patience which a famine or a persecution would call for if, in the meantime, the weather and every other inconvenience sets them grumbling. One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We — or at least I — shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest.

At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have “tasted and seen.” Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience.

— from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

For Reflection: Psalm 34:8

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.

Noticing the Dirt

I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience etc, doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be v. muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, & the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard.

The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the v. sign of His presence.

— from a letter to Mary Neylan, January 20, 1942

For Reflection: Psalm 40:1-3

I Delight to Do Your Will

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.

If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.”

— from Mere Christianity

For Reflection: Psalm 40:6-8

You Thought I Was One Just Like Yourself

I have often, on my knees, been shocked to find what sort of thoughts I have for a moment, been addressing to God; what infantile placations I was really offering, what claims I have really made, even what absurd adjustments or compromises I was, half-consciously, proposing. There is a Pagan, savage heart in me somewhere. For unfortunately the folly and idiot- cunning of Paganism seem to have far more power of surviving than its innocent or even beautiful elements. It is easy, once you have power, to silence the pipes, still the dances, disfigure the statues, and forget the stories; but not easy to kill the savage, the greedy, frightened creature now cringing, now blustering, in one’s soul— the creature to whom God may well say, “thou thoughtest I am even such a one as thyself” (Psalm 50.21).

— from Reflections on the Psalms

For Reflection: Psalm 50:19-23"'

Excerpted with permission from The C. S. Lewis Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

[piperrhymes]

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer #PipersPen   #pipergreenwriter  #theologos  #theologosministries #Theology  #Theologyofthanksgiving #theologygirl #theologymatters  #pilgrimscrossing #prayer #aprayinglife  #SabbathSanctuary  #devotion #Bible  #TheWord #Christ #Savior #Lord #Redeemer  #ChristtheCreator #wordlife #biblein90days #CSLewis #CSLewisstudybible #piercingheaven #prayersofthepuritans #dailyaltar #readinglife #PhDlife #lifeofthemind (at Black Forest, Colorado) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClwNJ9uuZaO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cslewisthoughts]

“To forgive for the moment is not difficult. But to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offence again every time it recurs to memory—there’s the real tussle. My resource is to look for some action of my own which is open to the same charge as the one I’m resenting. If I still start to remember how A let me down, I must remember how I let B down. If I find it difficult to forgive those who bullied me in school, let me, at that very moment, remember, and pray for, those I bullied.”

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[ihearyourmelody]

Relying on God has to begin all over again everyday as if nothing had yet been done.

CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[dk-thrive]

To forgive for the moment is not difficult. But to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offense again every time it recurs to the memory- there’s the real tussle.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt, Brace & World; 1964)

[apenitentialprayer]

If anyone says that man's free will, moved and aroused by God, by assenting to God's call and action, in no way cooperates toward disposing and preparing itself to obtain the grace of justification, that it cannot refuse its assent if it wishes, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive, let him be anathema.

The Council of Trent, Canon #4 On Justification (trans. H.J. Schroeder)

[W]hile God touches the heart of man through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself neither does absolutely nothing while receiving that inspiration, since he can also reject it, nor yet is he able by his own free will and without the grace of God to move himself to justice in His sight. Hence, when it is said in the sacred writings: Turn ye to Me, and I will turn to you [Zach. 1:3], we are reminded of our liberty; and when we reply: Convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted [Lam. 5:21], we confess we need the grace of God.

The Council of Trent, Decree Concerning Justification (Chapter V), trans. H.J. Schroeder. Italicized Scripture verses original.

God is present in each thing but not necessarily in the same mode; not in man as in the consecrated bread and wine, nor in a bad man as in a good one, nor in a beast as in a man, nor in a tree as in a beast, nor in inanimate matter as in a tree. I take it there is a paradox here. The higher the creature, the more also the less God is in it; the more present by grace, and the less present (by a sort of abdication) as mere power. By grace He gives the higher creatures power to will His will ('and wield their little tridents'): the lower ones simply execute it automatically.

C.S. Lewis (Letters To Malcolm — Chiefly on Prayer, page 100).

[castyourline]

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake."

⏤ C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

[danslavie97]

“Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don't agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ” ― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer