C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

This lost soul looked them over one and all,

Now sickening at the heart’s root; for he knew

This night was one of those when he would fall

And scream alone (such things they made him do)

And roll upon the floor. The madness grew

Wild at his breast, but still his brain was clear

That he could watch the moment coming near.

• From Narrative Poems

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called ‘resources.’ People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.

• From A Grief Observed
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

From @chinaaid : "Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church raided by police"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church raided by police

ChinaAid Source Photo

Distributed by ChinaAid, Mary 2023 ...

GUANGZHOU, GUANGDONG PROVINCE, CHINA – Authorities raided five locations of Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church simultaneously. Church elders, preachers, and co-workers were taken away. Police attempted to detain Pastor Huang Xiaoning, but he rejected their illegal action ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

On the Holy Spirit

It is quite right that you should feel that “something terrific” has happened to you (It has) and be “all glowy.” Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

After lunch I took my walk through Barton and over the fields, coming back by the Crab Apple Road. It was a most extraordinary afternoon. Most of the sky was very pale creamy blue, and there were clouds about, of the coldest shade of dark blue I have ever seen. The further hills were exactly the same as the clouds in colour and texture. But near the sun the sky simply turned white and the sun itself (its outline was invisible) was a patch of absolutely pure white light that looked as if it had no [more] power of heating than moonlight – tho’ it was quite a mild day in fact.

I got into a tremendously happy mood, what with the joy of being home again and certain vague anticipations of good thing beginning and a general sense of frosts breaking up – like the beginning of the Prelude. Some few birds were making a great noise as if it was spring …

• From All My Road Before Me

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

There’s a limit to the ‘one flesh.’ You can’t really share someone else’s weakness, or fear or pain. What you feel may be bad. It might conceivably be as bad as what the other felt, though I should distrust anyone who claimed that it was. But it would still be quite different. When I speak of fear, I mean the merely animal fear, the recoil of the organism from its destruction; the smothery feeling; the sense of being a rat in a trap. It can’t be transferred. The mind can sympathize; the body, less. In one way the bodies of lovers can do it least. All their love passages have trained them to have, not identical, but complementary, correlative, even opposite, feelings about one another.

We both knew this. I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. The end of hers would be the coming-of-age of mine. We were setting out on different roads. This cold truth, this terrible traffic- regulation (‘You, Madam, to the right—you, Sir, to the left’) is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.

And this separation, I suppose, waits for all. I have been thinking of H. and myself as peculiarly unfortunate in being torn apart. But presumably all lovers are. She once said to me, ‘Even if we both died at exactly the same moment, as we lie here side by side, it would be just as much a separation as the one you’re so afraid of.’ Of course she didn’t know, any more than I do. But she was near death; near enough to make a good shot. She used to quote ‘Alone into the Alone.’ She said it felt like that. And how immensely improbable that it should be otherwise! Time and space and body were the very things that brought us together; the telephone wires by which we communicated. Cut one off, or cut both off simultaneously. Either way, mustn’t the conversation stop?

• From A Grief Observed
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

From ServLife International ... "Spring Campaign Update"

ServLife International is a movement defined by values of God’s kingdom, not programs built around human efforts and activities. The reign and rule of God should be made apparent to every person on the planet, despite their religion, race or socioeconomic status. We believe that issues of justice are inseparable from the good news that Jesus Christ came to proclaim. ServLife exists to take the gospel of Christ and the hope of a better, more just, world to the lives of people we touch. This happens through individual contributions of time, creativity, resources and dreams.

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Spring Campaign Update: Providing hope

I’m so grateful to everyone that has donated since April 15th to help us reach $26,136.21, over halfway to our goal of $50,000 by the end of May. Your support has helped children like Nirula receive a quality education, pastors like Bijendra to share the hope and love of Jesus, and families like Sita’s make a good daily wage.

If you haven’t given yet, I want to invite you to invest in God’s work in India and Nepal to make a lasting difference in the lives of so many. Click here to support Nirula, Pastor Bijendra, Sita, and others like them ...

Join Our Mission

ServLife International propels reconciliation and justice by building global community to plant churches, care for children and fight poverty. Compelled by the message, life and love of Jesus Christ, we seek to care for the spiritual, physical, social, and economic areas of life in northern India and Nepal.  Learn more about our latest news, featured stories, and how to get involved at servlife.org

Support a Pastor Our church planters spread the love of Christ in some of the most difficult environments in the world. • Support Them ...	Sponsor a Child For only $30 per month you can help give a child food, education, care and, most importantly, hope. • Sponsor Now ...	Fight Poverty The HOPE Fund, our micro-finance program, provides start-up funds for a small business, paving a way out of poverty for families in need. • Learn More ...

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 Adam J. Nevins
 Executive Director
 ServLife International, Inc.
 P.O. Box 20596
 Indianapolis, IN 46220
 USA

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

“Stay where you are,” cried Digory, turning round to face her, “or we’ll all vanish. Don’t come an inch nearer.”

“Foolish boy,” said the Witch. “Why do you run from me? I mean you no harm. If you do not stop and listen to me now, you will miss some knowledge that would have made you happy all your life.”

“Well, I don’t want to hear it, thanks,” said Digory. But he did.

“I know what errand you have come on,” continued the Witch. “For it was I who was close beside you in the woods last night and heard all your counsels. You have plucked fruit in the garden yonder. You have it in your pocket now. And you are going to carry it back, untasted, to the Lion; for him to eat, for him to use. You simpleton! Do you know what that fruit is? I will tell you. It is the apple of youth, the apple of life. I know, for I have tasted it; and I feel already such changes in myself that I know I shall never grow old or die. Eat it, Boy, eat it; and you and I will both live forever and be king and queen of this whole world—or of your world, if we decide to go back there.”

“No thanks,” said Digory, “I don’t know that I care much about living on and on after everyone I know is dead. I’d rather live an ordinary time and die and go to Heaven.”

• From The Magician's Nephew
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

From PC(USA) Store ... "A Lectionary-Based Curriculum"

The Presbyterian Church (USA) offers a central online store where you can find all PC(USA)-produced books, curriculum, and resources in one place. PCUSAStore.com is a comprehensive selection of PC(USA) resources that provides the information and materials necessary to support new and existing congregations, leaders, study groups, and individuals forge a deeper understanding of Presbyterian beliefs and doctrines. PCUSAStore.com is maintained by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, the publishing house of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Geneva Press curriculum publishing, and other agency partners.

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We offer Feasting on the Word Curriculum for a variety of age groups. To accommodate lower summer attendance, the summer sessions combine the children age levels into one multi-age resource.

Visit www.pcusastore.com/FOWCurriculum to read more details about this curriculum and to download samples, the scope and sequence, and a guide for using this resource virtually.

You can also watch our introduction video about the curriculum to see if it’s right for you as you decide which curriculum to use for the 2023-2024 church education year.

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C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

[Science fiction] really does deal with issues far more serious than those realistic fiction deals with; real problems about human destiny and so on. Do you remember that story about the man who meets a female monster landed from another planet with all its cubs hanging round it? It’s obviously starving, and he offers them thing after thing to eat; they immediately vomit it up, until one of the young fastens on him, begins sucking his blood, and immediately begins to revive. This female creature is utterly unhuman, horrible in form; there’s a long moment when it looks at the man – they’re in a lonely place – and then very sadly it packs up its young, and goes back into its space-ship and goes away. Well now, you could not have a more serious theme than that. What is a footling story about some pair of human lovers compared with that?

• From Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

On Holiness

If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

I’ve just found in an old note-book a poem, with no author’s name attached, which is rather relevant to something we were talking about a few weeks ago—I mean, the haunting fear that there is no one listening, and that what we call prayer is soliloquy: someone talking to himself. This writer takes the bull by the horns and says in effect: ‘Very well, suppose it is’, and gets a surprising result. Here is the poem:

They tell me, Lord, that when I seem

To be in speech with you,

Since but one voice is heard, it’s all a dream,

One talker aping two.

Sometimes it is, yet not as they

Conceive it. Rather, I

Seek in myself the things I hoped to say,

But lo!, my wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake

The listener’s role and through

My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake

The thoughts I never knew

And thus you neither need reply

Nor can; thus, while we seem

Two talkers, though are One forever, and I

No dreamer, but thy dream.

Dream makes it too like Pantheism and was perhaps dragged in for the rhyme. But is he not right in thinking that prayer in its most perfect state is soliloquy?

• From Letters to Malcolm

From @chinaaid : "US commission labels china “country of particular concern”"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

US commission labels china “country of particular concern”

ChinaAid Photo

Distributed by ChinaAid, May 2023 ...

WASHINGTON, DC – USCIRF released its 2023 Annual Report detailing concerns about religious freedom worldwide. They recommended China and eleven other countries as serious violators of religious freedom ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Everyone who accepts the teaching of St Paul must have a belief in “sanctification”. But I should myself be very chary of describing such operations of the Holy Ghost as “experiences” if by experiences we mean things necessarily discoverable by introspection. And I should be still more chary of mapping out a series of such experiences as an indispensable norm (or syllabus!) for all Christians. I think the ways in which God saves us are probably infinitely various and admit varying degrees of consciousness in the patient. Anything which sets him saying, “Now – Stage II ought soon to be coming along – Is this it?” I think bad and likely to lead some to presumption and others to despair. We must leave God to dress the wound and not keep on taking peeps under the bandage for ourselves

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
• Compiled in The Business of Heaven

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

The Monk, as they called him, settled himself on the camp-chair beside his bunk and stared through the window at the harsh sand and black-blue sky of Mars. He did not mean to begin his “work” for ten minutes yet. Not, of course, the work he had been brought there to do. He was the meteorologist of the party, and his work in that capacity was largely done; he had found out whatever could be found out. There was nothing more, within the limited radius he could investigate, to be observed for at least twenty-five days. And meteorology had not been his real motive. He had chosen three years on Mars as the nearest modern equivalent to a hermitage in the desert. He had come there to meditate: to continue the slow, perpetual rebuilding of that inner structure which, in his view, it was the main purpose of life to rebuild.

• From The Dark Tower

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

On Heaven

Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.

Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness; but your darkness cannot now infect our light. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?

• From The Great Divorce
• Compiled in Words to Live By

From PC(USA) Store ... "Prayers for Individuals and Communities"

The Presbyterian Church (USA) offers a central online store where you can find all PC(USA)-produced books, curriculum, and resources in one place. PCUSAStore.com is a comprehensive selection of PC(USA) resources that provides the information and materials necessary to support new and existing congregations, leaders, study groups, and individuals forge a deeper understanding of Presbyterian beliefs and doctrines. PCUSAStore.com is maintained by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, the publishing house of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Geneva Press curriculum publishing, and other agency partners.

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• Read an Excerpt

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C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace. On any view whatever, to say, ‘H. is dead,’ is to say, ‘All that is gone.’ It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where ‘the former things have passed away.’

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions ‘on the further shore,’ pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There’s not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn’t be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the spiritualists bait their hook! ‘Things on this side are not so different after all.’ There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.

And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air.

• From A Grief Observed
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

WAW Wednesday ... "Summer is Coming!!"

"The Word at Work is a ministry that mobilizes churches and individuals to answer God's call to minister to those in need," writes Rev. Tim Tam, Spiritual Director of the Amarillo, Texas-based ministry. "Through our relationships, God reveals needs and opportunities for service. As we come along side the poor, new friendships develop and doors for ministry open. As we serve, God provides the resources to supply for the needs he reveals."

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WAW Wednesday: "Summer is Coming!!"

On Tuesday May 2 we had our first Connecting / Fundraiser in Lubbock TX. It was a great opportunity to have our partners in Lubbock and some new faces connect with each other and our Board. We look forward to having more events like this around the US as we seek to connect more with our wonderful U.S. partners.

Here is a picture of a warehouse with supplies headed to Belize on May 15th, we have a Container to load on Monday and it will be filled with some great things for our Belizean partners. If you ever what to be involved with our Shipping Container ministry please contact Derek @ (575) 693-6136. Also this month we will start our first summer team traveling to Belize for a mission trip. Between May 27 - July 29 we will have 8 Teams in Belize. We are excited about what God is doing in the country of Belize and how we will be able to connect relationally to those we go to serve.

WAW Photo

I wanted to give you a recap of what I said during our connection night in Lubbock. I believe that it speaks to the heart of what we are all about here at The Word At Work.

Relationship ...

... is about relationships. Relationships with US Partners with Belizean partners building. Relationships with people to ultimately disciple them into a knowledge and salvation with Jesus.

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:11-12 ESV

Friends

Our US partners are our friends
Our Belizean partners are our friends
We want them to get to know each other.

How can you become involved:

In three ways ...

Pray - we need your prayers - we have a mandate to change a culture for Christ.

Go - let me show you! The best way to understand the mission of TWAW is to go and put boots on the ground to truly understand what this ministry is involved in. So if that is an interest to you there are four ways to go:

     1- vision trip - a few individuals going and looking at as many ministries as possible to then come home and decide how to become involved.
     2- bring a mission team, and work in a main area that moves you and connects you to our Belizean Partners.

     3- VWP- Vacation with a Purpose - bring your family for a half vacation and half Mission trip. This is an opportunity to expose your family to a mission field and change your family's mindset, as well as have a tremendous vacation.

Give - This is the ask, nothing happened in any ministry without money. And guess what….Missions are expensive, there is a price on helping people. So we do ask that you consider giving into this ministry. Giving into our operations provides salaries to our 6 employees, office needs, retreat lease, time spent in coordination with groups, and everything in between.

There are also some very large projects we are working to start as well as complete:

1- 8 Mile: A school in a community where we have built a vibrant church, there is currently no school in this community and they have to bus kids into Belize City for school.
2- Hospice: a facility for Hospice - we are breaking ground very soon
3- River Property: finance a building remodel by the airport that would house ministries, possibly business for Belizeans, and a training center for leadership development.

“Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor!” Psalm 72:1-4 ESV

Please Contact Derek Osburn @ (575>693-6136 if you would like to get more involved with The Word At Work.

Derek Osburn
Executive Director

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C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

What are the key words of modern criticism? Creative, with its opposite derivative; spontaneity with its opposite convention; freedom, contrasted with rules. Great authors are innovators, pioneers, explorers; bad authors bunch in schools and follow models. Or again, great authors are always “breaking fetters” and “bursting bonds.” They have personality, they “are themselves.” I do not know whether we often think out the implication of such language into a consistent philosophy; but we certainly have a general picture of bad work flowering from conformity and discipleship, and of good work bursting out from certain centres of explosive force – apparently self-originating force – which we call men of genius.

Now the New Testament has nothing at all to tell us of literature. I know that there are some who like to think of Our Lord Himself as a poet and cite the parables to support their view. I admit freely that to believe in the Incarnation at all is to believe that every mode of human excellence is implicit in His historical human character; poethood, of course, included. But if all had been developed, the limitation is a single human life would have been transcended and He would not have been a man; therefore all excellences save the spiritual remained in varying degrees implicit.

• From Christian Reflections
• Compiled in The Business of Heaven

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

[Digory] thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came into his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out: “But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

“My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.”

• From The Magician's Nephew
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

From @chinaaid : "Pastor Li Taiyuan and Dr. Zhang Yi imprisoned for two years with no information on verdict"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

Pastor Li Taiyuan and Dr. Zhang Yi imprisoned for two years with no information on verdict

Contributed Photo

Distributed by ChinaAid, April 2023 ...

HUBEI PROVINCE, CHINA – Pastor Li Taiyuan and his wife Dr. Zhang Yi have been detained by Wuhan authorities for two years. Their case recently went to trial. The verdict is not known to the outside world because the government kept the information under tight control ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

And then one or other dies. And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off—something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape. I wonder. If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure. We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ by the loved one while she is here. Then comes the tragic figure of the dance in which we must learn to be still taken out of ourselves though the bodily presence is withdrawn, to love the very Her, and not fall back to loving our past, or our memory, or our sorrow, or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.

• From A Grief Observed
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

On Grief

Real sorrow ends neither with a bang nor a whimper. Sometimes, after a spiritual journey like Dante’s, down to the centre and then, terrace by terrace, up the mountain of accepted pain, it may rise into peace—but a peace hardly less severe than itself. Sometimes it remains for life, a puddle in the mind which grows always wider, shallower, and more unwholesome. Sometimes it just peters out, as other moods do. One of these alternatives has grandeur, but not tragic grandeur.

• From An Experiment in Criticism
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one’s adult enjoyment of what are called “children’s books”. I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty – except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we out to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much be for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children’s games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown-ups—playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretence of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.

Now, the moment you realise ‘Here I am, dressing up as Christ,’ it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretence could be made less of a pretence and more of a reality. You will find several things going on in your mind which would not be going on there if you were really a son of God. Well, stop them. Or you may realise that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash- up. Well, go and do it.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

TO SLEEP

I will find out a place for thee, O Sleep—

A hidden wood among the hill-tops green,

Full of soft streams and little winds that creep

The murmuring boughs between.

A hollow cup above the ocean placed

Where nothing rough, nor loud, nor harsh shall be,

But woodland light and shadow interlaced

And summer sky and sea

There in the fragrant twilight I will raise

A secret altar of the rich sea sod,

Whereat to offer sacrifice and praise

Unto my lonely god;

Due sacrifice of his own drowsy flowers

The deadening poppies in an ocean shell

Round which through all forgotten days and hours

The great seas wove their spell.

So may he send me dreams of dead delight

And draughts of cool oblivion, quenching pain,

And sweet, half-wakeful moments in the night

To hear the falling rain.

And when he meets me at the dusk of day

To call me home for ever, this I ask—

That he may lead me friendly on that way

And wear no frightful mask.

• From Spirits in Bondage

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking our- selves up each time. We shall of course be very 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 in us; it is the very sign of His presence.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

No one is looking at world history without some preconception in favor of progress could find in it a steady up gradient. There is often progress within a given field over a limited period. A school of pottery or painting, a moral effort in a particular direction, a practical art like sanitation or shipbuilding, may continuously improve over a number of years. If this process could spread to all departments of life and continue indefinitely, there would be “progress” of the sort our fathers believed in. But it never seems to do so. Either it is interrupted (by barbarian irruption or the even less resistible infiltration of modern industrialism) or else, more mysteriously, it decays. The idea which here shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience. And it is a myth which distracts us from our real duties and our real interest. It is our attempt to guess the plot of a drama in which we are the characters. But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producers, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are “on” concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

• From The World's Last Night
• Compiled in The Business of Heaven

From @chinaaid : "CCP Committee To Advance the Sinicization of Christianity"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

CCP Committee To Advance the Sinicization of Christianity

QCW Photo

Distributed by ChinaAid, April 2023 ...

SHANDONG PROVINCE, CHINA – The government-controlled Christian “patriotic organizations” established a new “Special Committee To Advance the Sinicization of Christianity,” which may be China’s first committee dedicated to promoting the development of Christianity in the Chinese Communist context ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...