Okay, it's not the weekend, but still, here's a little food for non-weekend thought from C.S. Lewis:
(From one of my favorites of all of Lewis' writings--The Screwtape Letters. This is written from the point of view of Screwtape, a senior devil, writing to a "junior tempter," Wormwood, about how to woo and win for hell a human assigned to him.)
"Humans are amphibians--half spirit and half animal...As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life--his interest in work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty...
Now it may surprise you to learn that in the Enemy's [remember--the Enemy from Screwtape's vantage point is God!] efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us [meaning satan and devils] a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of it's will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at it's expense. But the obedience the Enemy [God!] demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself--creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over."
Just in case you, like me, needed the reminder that this temporal life truly is one consisting of "troughs and peaks" and that whatever season we are going through at the moment will not last forever.
Just a few examples: Peak--preparing your children for college with all the excitement, joy, and opportunities college will give them! Trough--returning to a much quieter home and grieving that your children are growing up and life is inexorably changing.
Peak--summer vacation! No schedules, hot weather, beach, mountains, children home from school, family vacations. Trough--end of summer vacation and a return to schedules with everyone going every which way, and all the frenzy and chaos of preparing for school.
Peak--beloved child getting married! Joy, joy, joy! Trough--planning the wedding and feeling overwhelmed at times with all the details. Peak--but also the fun and excitement and privilege of planning the wedding! Trough--being told you cannot invite so many people to the wedding and not being able to include all your friends.
Peak--sweet Moses. Trough--missing Moses.
Peak--getting a lot accomplished, including completely catching up on all the laundry. Yahoo! Trough--the sudden appearance of more dirty clothes, seemingly within moments of "catching up" on the laundry. Feeling you will never ever get everything done that you need to get done. Peak--realizing it's not the end of the world if you don't get it all done! Double peak--determining to put loving and enjoying God and loving the people He has graciously placed in your life as your preeminent priority... and discovering a joy far deeper than getting everything done!
I don't know about you, but I tend to forget about the law of undulation. And I tend to assume, especially in the midst of life's troughs, that whatever I'm enduring at the moment will go on forever... that my momentary feelings of discouragement or defeat or even despair will last forever.
But they won't. Never do. Eventually a peak is coming. And God uses those peaks, but especially those troughs (hard as they are), for our greater good and His greater glory. As Lewis puts it, because "He wants servants who can finally become sons." Our Heavenly Father wants beloved sons--emptied of our selfishness and pride--so we can be filled to overflowing with Himself.
So if you are in the midst of a peak right now, rejoice in the goodness of God and give Him the praise! But if you are enduring a trough--take heart! It will not last forever, and God is working and moving and using even the hardest and deepest of troughs to transform us into the men and women He's called us to be. Making servants into sons. Transforming our weaknesses into strengths. Turning our mourning into rejoicing. And filling our emptiness with His fullness of joy and peace and hope and power. It's the story of redemption painted all over the law of undulation...from peak to trough...all the way to heaven.
To God--the Author of time and undulation and redemption--be all the glory.
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