Thursday, October 29, 2009

Can you stand it?

I've read C.S. Lewis' "The Weight of Glory" countless times. For some reason I never really noticed the following section, until I heard Tim Keller quote it in a sermon.

Lewis says "The faint, far-off results of those energies
which God’s creative rapture implanted in
matter when He made the worlds are what
we now call physical pleasures; and even
thus filtered, they are too much for our
present management. What would it be to
taste at the fountain-head that stream of
which even these lower reaches prove so
intoxicating?
Yet that, I believe, is what lies
before us. The whole man is to drink joy
from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine
said, the rapture of the saved soul will
“flow over” into the glorified body. In the
light of our present specialized and
depraved appetites we cannot imagine this
torrens voluptatis, and I warn everyone
seriously not to try. But it must be
mentioned, to drive out thoughts even
more misleading—thoughts that what is
saved is a mere ghost, or that the risen
body lives in numb insensibility. The body
was made for the Lord, and these dismal
fancies are wide of the mark."

In other words, if God would pour out a torrent of pleasure without all the filters you currently have,.....if the river of delights He offers would come to you from closer to the source, I'm not sure that you'd be able to handle it!

If this peeked your interest and want to read one of the best sermons of all time, here it is:
http://www.doxaweb.com/assets/doxa.pdf

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