C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Of a book’s meaning … its author is not necessarily the best, and is never a perfect, judge. One of his intentions usually was that it should have a certain meaning: he cannot be sure that it has. He cannot even be sure that the meaning he intended it to have was in every way, or even at all, better than the meaning which readers find in it.

• From Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

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On Marriage

Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.

• From The Horse and His Boy
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Screwtape reveals Hell’s intentions for human marriage:

The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy. Ever since our Father’s first great victory, we have rendered the former very difficult to them. The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing up as a way of escape. We have done this through the poets and novelists by persuading the humans that a curious, and usually shortlived, experience which they call ‘being in love’ is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding.

This idea is our parody of an idea that came from the Enemy. The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into astronger. ‘To be’ means ‘to be in competition’.

• From The Screwtape Letters
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Confession

I think our official view of confession can be seen in the form for the Visitation of the Sick where it says “Then shall the sick person be moved (i.e., advised, prompted) to make a . . . Confession . . . if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.” That is, where Rome makes Confession compulsory for all, we make it permissible for any: not “generally necessary” but profitable. We do not doubt that there can be forgiveness without it. But, as your own experience shows, many people do not feel forgiven, i.e., do not effectively “believe in the forgiveness of sins,” without it. The quite enormous advantage of coming really to believe in forgiveness is well worth the horrors (I agree, they are horrors) of a first confession.

Also, there is the gain in self-knowledge: most of [us] have never really faced the facts about ourselves until we uttered them aloud in plain words, calling a spade a spade. I certainly feel I have profited enormously by the practice. At the same time I think we are quite right not to make it generally obligatory, which wd. force it on some who are not ready for it and might do harm..

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

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Today's Reading

When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, “But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.” Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn’t mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The good is uncreated; it never could have been otherwise; it has no shadow of contingency; it lies, as Plato said, on the other side of existence. It is the Rita of the Hindus by which the gods themselves are divine, the Tao of the Chinese from which all realities proceed. But we, favoured beyond the wisest pagans, know what lies beyond existence, what admits no contingency, what lends divinity to all else, what is the ground of all existence, is not simply a law but also a begetting love, a love begotten, and the love which, being between these two, is also imminent in all those who are caught up to share the unity of their self-cause life. God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.

• From Christian Relations
• Compiled in A Mind Awake

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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We say a great many things in church (and out of church too) without thinking of what we are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” I had been saying it for several years before I asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth putting in. “If one is a Christian,” I thought, “of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying.” But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins is not nearly so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is the sort of thing that very easily slips away if we don’t keep on polishing it up.

We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord’s Prayer; was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don’t forgive you will not be forgiven. No part of His teaching is clearer, and there are no exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t, we shall be forgiven none of our own.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On the Lord's Prayer

We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord’s Prayer; it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven. No part of His teaching is clearer, and there are no exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t, we shall be forgiven none of our own.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The word religion is extremely rare in the New Testament or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practices to which we give the collective name of religion are themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one’s attention fixed on God and on one’s neighbor in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about religion; he hasn’t the time. Religion is what we (or he himself at a later moment) call his activity from outside.

• From The World's Last Night

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TO DR. F. MORGAN ROBERTS: On Lewis’s own rules about prayer.

31 July 1954

I am certainly unfit to advise anyone else on the devotional life. My own rules are (1) To make sure that, wherever else they may be placed, the main prayers should not be put ‘last thing at night’. (2) To avoid introspection in prayer—I mean not to watch one’s own mind to see if it is in the right frame, but al- ways to turn the attention outwards to God. (3) Never, never to try to generate an emotion by will power. (4) To pray without words when I am able, but to fall back on words when tired or otherwise below par. With renewed thanks. Perhaps you will sometimes pray for me?

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

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Screwtape offers more advice on using daily annoyances to entrap a Patient:

It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very ‘spiritual’, that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother—the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment’s notice from impassioned prayer for a wife’s or son’s ‘soul’ to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm

• From The Screwtape Letters
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On the Lord's Prayer

If you are interested enough to have read thus far you are probably interested enough to make a shot at saying your prayers: and, whatever else you say, you will probably say the Lord’s Prayer.

Its very first words are Our Father. Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending. Because, of course, the moment you realise what the words mean, you realise that you are not a son of God. You are not being like The Son of God, whose will and interests are at one with those of the Father: you are a bundle of self-centred fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death. So that, in a way, this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek. But the odd thing is that He has ordered us to do it.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in Words to Live By

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express that same delight in God which made David dance. I am not saying that this is so pure or profound a thing as the love of God reached by the greatest Christian saints and mystics. But I am not comparing it with that, I am comparing it with the merely dutiful ‘church-going’ and laborious ‘saying our prayers’ to which most of us are, thank God not always, but often, reduced. Against that it stands out as something astonishingly robust, virile, and spontaneous; something we may regard with an innocent envy and may hope to be infected by as we read.

• From Reflections on the Psalms

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We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.

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

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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Fasnacht was once more proof how little purely intellectual power avail to make a big man. I thought that he had not lived a single one of his theories: he had worked them with his brain but not with his blood. I think I rather surprised him by remarking that he was a remarkable guest, for he had made me talk more solemn nonsense that I had done for two years.

When he went I walked with him to the corner of the road. I said I believed the things I had said but he had been playing with counters. He admitted he could only clinch his view by committing suicide. He then left me. I forgot to mention that he referred to everything he liked – including Idealistic Nihilism – as ‘very sweet.’ Faugh! He also professed to find my view of a Reality with no margins intolerable, expiating on the pressure: I said I loved it.

• From All My Road Before Me

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On Saints

God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such). The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death, the brighter the re-birth. And this super-added glory will, with true vicariousness, exalt all creatures, and those who have never fallen will thus bless Adam’s fall.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in Words to Live By

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Baim Hanif via Unsplash

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 15, 2023

"LEADING THEOLOGICALLY" PODCAST - For the Rev. Joanne Rodríguez, executive director of the Hispanic Theological Initiative at Princeton Theological Seminary, “en conjunto,” or “on the whole” describes the way HTI helps Latine scholars through their doctoral studies and into the academy or wherever it is that God is calling them.

That holistic approach is clearly working ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Masculine and Feminine

For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more. If we had never fallen in love we should have none the less been always together, and created a scandal. That’s what I meant when I once praised her for her “masculine virtues.” But she soon put a stop to that by asking how I’d like to be praised for my feminine ones. It was a good riposte, dear. Yet there was something of the Amazon, something of Penthesileia and Camilla. And you, as well as I, were glad it should be there. You were glad I should recognize it.

Solomon calls his bride Sister. Could a woman be a complete wife unless, for a moment, in one particular mood, a man felt almost inclined to call her Brother? . . .

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry “masculine” when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as “feminine.” But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. “In the image of God created He them.” Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes.

• From A Grief Observed
• Compiled in Words to Live By

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

The Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 16, 2023

SYNOD OF THE COVENANT'S "EQUIPPING PREACHERS" SERIES - The Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes, president emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary, recently jumped at the chance to speak to preachers as part of Synod of the Covenant’s Equipping Preachers series ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

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SPOOKS

Last night I dreamed that I was come again

Unto the house where my beloved dwells

After long years of wandering and pain.

And I stood out beneath the drenching rain

And all the street was bare, and black with night,

But in my true love’s house was warmth and light.

Yet I could not draw near nor enter in,

And long I wondered if some secret sin

Or old, unhappy anger held me fast;

Till suddenly it came into my head

That I was killed long since and lying dead—

Only a homeless wraith that way had passed.

So thus I found my true love’s house again

And stood unseen amid the winter night

And the lamp burned within, a rosy light,

And the wet street was shining in the rain.

• From Spirits in Bondage

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek via Unsplash

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 14, 2023

PRESBYTERIANS FOR EARTH CARE WEBINAR - Presbyterians and other people of faith are becoming more intentional about planting their church grounds with the thriving of God’s creatures in mind, and a recent webinar offered by Presbyterians for Earth Care explained how and where that’s happening ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "2023 South Plains/Lubbock area Jamaicas schedule"

• Food, fun and fellowship across the South Plains

Staff Report
• Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - Parishes have begun planning 2023 Jamaicas. Mark these dates on your calendars to join for food, fun and fellowship:

∙ July 15: Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Plainview, 7-11 p.m.

∙ July 16: Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Plainview, noon to 11 p.m.

                 Sacred Heart Church, Plains, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

                 Saint Jude Church Tahoka
∙ July 29: St. Isidore Church, Abernathy
∙ July 30: Saint William Church, Denver City, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

                 Saint Ann Church, Morton, noon to 7 p.m.
∙ August 5: Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, New Deal
∙ August 12: Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Slaton, noon to midnight.
∙ August 20: Saint Philip Benizi Church, Shallowater, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
∙ August 26: Saint Theresa Church, Hale Center, 1-8 p.m.
∙ August 27: Saint Joseph Church, Lubbock 

∙ September 10: Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Lubbock
∙ September 16: Sacred Heart Church, Plainview, noon to 9 p.m.

In the News ... "Woman at the well was blessed"

Painting by Angelika Kauffman

• She carried message to her village

By Bob Campbell, Reporter
• Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - The story of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well is told in John 4:4-42 to show that everyone has great value in God’s eyes.

That’s according to the Revs. James J. Bolton and Albert Flores, who say the story is astonishing in the context of the times because Jews were not supposed to associate with Samaritans or even travel through Samaria.

“The main significance is that no one is better than anyone else,” said the Rev. Bolton, pastor of St. James Missionary Baptist Church. “In Jesus’ eyesight, in his perspective, everyone can be loved.

“He saw value in the woman even though she was considered a prostitute.”

Noting that Jesus had told the woman that she had had five husbands and she wasn’t married to the man she was living with, Bolton said the encounter “is one of his greatest acts of grace.”

He said there are only about 400 Samaritans left and they are still where they lived in Biblical times with the Mediterranean Sea on the west, the Jordan River on the east, Galilee on the north and Judea on the south.

“They did a lot of inbreeding because they were not supposed to go outside their race and when you have inbreeding you get diseases and die young,” Bolton said.

“The woman said the Samaritans were supposed to worship on Mount Ephraim, but Jesus said worship starts in the heart. We believe in what is known as the Apostolic Commission with Jesus sending someone to tell others about him.

“A lot of people say women aren’t supposed to spread the Gospel, but here we have an instance where Jesus sends the woman into town and she brings a lot of people back with her after saying, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’”

The Rev. Flores, pastor of Victory Life Church, said the woman “felt like she was blessed for Jesus to ask her for water ...

• read the rest of this OA report ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says “look at that” and points; the more I follow the pointing of his finger the less I can possible see of him. To be sure there are all sorts of difficult questions hanging over us. But for the moment let us thrust them aside. Whatever may turn out to be the whole truth, let us make fast, before we go a step farther, this aspect of the truth. To see things as a poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles: in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him. Such is the first positive result of my inquiry.

• From The Personal Heresy

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Randy Hobson

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 13, 2023

THE REV. DR. J. HERBERT NELSON DELIVERS BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS AT DAVIS & ELKINS COLLEGE -Addressing the Class of 2023 at Davis & Elkins College during this year’s baccalaureate service, the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II assured graduates that “it doesn’t matter if you came here cum laude or thank you Lordy. If you wear that tassel today, say thank you for the amazing way family and friends have nurtured you.” ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "Prodigal Son’s story teaches forgiveness"

Painting by  Pompeo Girolamo Batoni

• Jesus illustrates superiority of God’s mercy

By Bob Campbell, Reporter
• Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - The follies of youth, the balm of a father’s forgiveness, the harshness that may arise among siblings … these are some of the topics that Jesus covers in his Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32.

Ministers Leslie Boone and Glen Anderson say the story primarily shows the superiority of God’s forgiveness to man’s.

“So many people can relate to the son who was lost, his cry for mercy and wanting to go back home,” said Boone, minister of Andrews Church of Christ. “As I’ve gotten older, I have wondered which is the better lesson, how the father welcomes his son back or how the older brother needs to learn to love his brother.

“We all want grace and mercy, but it can be hard to give it to the people around us.”

Boone said God has always been more loving than people and he always will be.

“The amount of money that the Prodigal Son got from his father was not as much as he had thought it was and he ended up spending it a lot quicker than he had planned with his so-called friends,” he said. “The shame he felt helps us to understand what really matters.

“Then Jesus flips it around to talk about how the father was being lavish with what he gave the younger son when he brought him back. It’s the idea of God being extravagant with his mercy and kindness.”

The Rev. Anderson, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Crane, said a key element of the story is the prodigal son’s recognition of his folly and his eagerness to be forgiven ...

• read the rest of this OA report ...

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Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. Do we suppose that they can do Him any good, or fear, like the chorus in Milton, that human irreverence can bring about ‘His glory’s diminution’? A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not yet God— though it may be the nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy can attain. Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is to a reflection of the Divine life, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to ‘put on Christ’, to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.

• From The Problem of Pain
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

The Rev. Angela Tyler-Williams

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 12, 2023

SPRITUAL ALLIANCE FOR REPRODUCTIVE DIGNITY (SACReD) - At SACReD, the Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity, which the Rev. Angela Tyler-Williams serves as co-director for movement building, religious leaders, organizers, academics and congregations work together to advance the cause of reproductive justice.

Using selected verses in Hebrews 11 and 12, Tyler-Williams sought to do just that during a recent Chapel worship service for the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Rev. Shanea D. Leonard and Samantha Davis organized the service ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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“And now hear your task. Far from here in the land of Narnia there lives an aged king who is sad because he has no prince of his blood to be king after him. He has no heir because his only son was stolen from him many years ago, and no one in Narnia knows where that prince went or whether he is still alive. But he is. I lay on you this command, that you seek this lost prince until either you have found him and brought him to his father’s house, or else died in the attempt, or else gone back to your own world.”

“How, please?” said Jill.

“I will tell you, Child,” said the Lion. “These are the signs by which I will guide you in your quest. First; as soon as the Boy Eustace sets foot in Narnia, he will meet an old and dear friend. He must greet that friend at once; if he does, you will both have good help. Second; you must journey out of Narnia to the north till you come to the ruined city of the ancient giants. Third; you shall find a writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you. Fourth; you will know the lost prince (if you find him) by this, that he will be the first person you have met in your travels who will ask you to do something in my name, in the name of Aslan.”

As the Lion seemed to have finished, Jill thought she should say something. So she said, “Thank you very much. I see.”

“Child,” said Aslan, in a gentler voice than he had yet used, “perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to remember.”

• From The Silver Chair
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Rich Copley/Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 11, 2023

ST. ANDREW PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH'S COMMITMENT TO MATTHEW 25 25 - When Jesus began reading from a scroll in the synagogue, Luke’s gospel records that his text came from the book of Isaiah. “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,” Jesus says, quoting Isaiah.

That’s also the work of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Iowa City, Iowa, says Jeff Charis-Carlson, the church’s director of communications and media ministries, who sat for an interview recently to discuss the Matthew 25 ministry St. Andrew has been doing ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "Nonprofit Management Center to hold Generations session in Odessa"

• Accepting applications through July 15, 2023

Staff Report
• Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - The Nonprofit Management Center is accepting applications for Fall 2023 sessions of the Generations program through July 15. There are currently two separate eight session programs each year. Spring sessions are held in Midland and Fall sessions are held in Odessa.

It is widely recognized by the staff and boards of nonprofit organizations that the Permian Basin is facing a serious challenge in the recruitment and retention of volunteers equipped to serve at the board level. More than 400 business professionals from Midland, Odessa and nearby communities have graduated from “Generations…Past, Present, and Future,” a program created to address this issue.

Generations teaches willing, skilled candidates how to be informed, committed leaders on nonprofit boards by providing adequate oversight of administration in the nonprofit governance. Upon completing eight sessions over a four-month period, participants transition into service on a local nonprofit board that fits their personal preference and passion.

To register, visit www.nmc-pb.org/generations, or call (432) 570-7971.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

On the Present Moment

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in Words to Live By

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Rich Copley/Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 10, 2023

ST. ANDREW PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH POP-UP MINISTRY - St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Iowa City, Iowa, constructed its beautiful and versatile campus seven years ago

While the Pop-Up Ministry Room is not the most eye-catching of St. Andrew’s varied ministry spaces, it’s easily the most versatile, with plenty of storage and display space for clothing and food distribution as the need arises. Church leaders liken the large space to the Room of Requirement in the Harry Potter novels ...

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C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

THE DAY WITH A WHITE MARK

All day I have been tossed and whirled in a preposterous happiness:

Was it elf in the blood? Or a bird in the brain? Or even part

Of the cloudy crested, fifty-league-long, loud uplifted wave

Of a journeying angel’s transit roaring over and over through my heart?

My garden’s spoiled, my holidays are cancelled, the omens harden;

The plann’d and unplann’d miseries deepend; the knots draw tight.

Reason kept telling me all day my mood was out of season.

It was, too. In the dark ahead the breakers are only white.

Yet I—I could have kissed the very scullery taps. The colour of

My day was like a peacock’s chest. In at each sense there stole

Ripplings and dewy sprinkles of delight that with them drew

Fine threads of memory through the vibrant thickness of the soul.

• From Poems

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Those who say ‘The more I see of men the better I like dogs’—those who find in animals a relief from the demands of human companionship –will be well advised to examine their real reasons.

• From The Four Loves

From @FWMission ... Friday Story: “A Life Transformed in Brazil”

Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing nations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, FWM works around the world in partnership with a vast network of humanitarian, faith-based and government organizations, sending wheelchairs to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, providing not only the gift of mobility, but of dignity, independence, and hope.

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FWM Photos

Friday Story: “A Life Transformed in Brazil"

I’ll never forget meeting Richanderson, a brave and sweet seven-year-old boy.

It was during an expedition to deliver wheelchairs to indigenous people living with disabilities in some of Brazil’s most remote villages.

Richanderson’s life has been full of challenges. Born prematurely, he was diagnosed with a condition that would prevent him from ever walking. His mother now spends almost all her time caring for him, along with her two-year-old daughter and elderly mother.

It was heartbreaking to hear about the challenges that she faces every day. She gets little outside assistance, and some even refuse to believe that she has a child with disabilities and needs help. It’s a constant struggle to provide for her family and care for Richanderson, who needed a wheelchair to get around.

But they couldn’t get one on their own, and no one else would help—until friends like you came along.

Thanks to your generosity, we were able to deliver a brand-new wheelchair that transformed Richanderson’s life.

The joy on his face was unforgettable as we lifted him up into a wheelchair for the very first time. His mother was equally grateful, as the wheelchair makes a world of difference in her daily caregiving responsibilities.

But our work is not done yet. As we approach the end of this fiscal year, we still need your help to reach our fiscal year goal by sending 2,100 wheelchairs to those in need. Your support has been vital in making a difference in the lives of families like Richanderson’s, but we still have a long way to go.

Nuka Solomon
Chief Executive Officer
Free Wheelchair Mission

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Your generous, tax-deductible gift to Free Wheelchair Mission will not only help provide people around the world with the transforming gift of mobility, but the invaluable gifts of renewed dignity, independence, and hope.

• Ways to Give ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal?

• 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 Love

There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.

• 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

“I see I’m making myself unpopular,” [Scudamour] went on, “just as Dr Ransom did the other day. Well, I dare say I am rather poor company at present. You will wait till you see yourselves in Othertime, and we’ll find how you like it. Of course I oughtn’t to complain. This is science. And who ever heard of a new scientific discovery which didn’t show that the real universe was even fouler and meaner and more dangerous than you had supposed? I never went in for religion, but I begin to think Dr Ransom was right. I think we have tapped whatever reality is behind all the old stories about hell and devils and witches. I don’t know. Some filthy sort of something going on alongside the ordinary world and all mixed up with it.”

• From The Dark Tower

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need no consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

• From Letters to Malcolm

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

The Christian doctrine that there is no ‘salvation’ by works done according to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically.

The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort – it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us

• From Present Concerns

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

If I am never tempted, and cannot even imagine myself being tempted, to gamble, this does not mean that I am better than those who are. The timidity and pessimism which exempt me from that temptation themselves tempt me to draw back from those risks and adventures which every man ought to take.

• From Reflections on the Psalms