Thankful for C.S. Lewis

                       A little food for weekend thought--

      On this day, 51 years ago, one of the great heroes of the faith, C.S. Lewis, went home to be with the Lord.  What an impact this man and his writings have made over the years!
      So today, I'm thankful for C.S. Lewis as well as for all of those who have gone before us, teaching, encouraging, and pointing to us to Christ with their words and by their actions.  And that's a mighty long list--we could spend all day thinking of folks for whom we need to thank the Lord!  Thank You, Father, for my parents, brothers and sisters, husband (who has, as he once described it--"the gift of opinions"--who knew that was a spiritual gift?), children (how often mine have taught and blessed me), teachers, writers, pastors, friends...the list goes on and on.  So thankful.
      And in honor of C.S. Lewis, here's a little something from one of my very favorite of his writings, The Screwtape Letters.  As we contemplate all the blessings this time of year for which we're thankful, it helps to recall that God is the Creator and Giver of every one of those gifts, or as Lewis puts it, "pleasures."  Sometimes we tend to think of pleasures as a waste of time or even as sin.  But the mind of God conceived those pleasures, and He gave them to us as a means for deep contentment and true joy.  Our problem is the way we twist or misuse or subvert those pleasures.    Okay, enough of my drivel!
      Here's how the senior devil, Screwtape, explains to Wormwood, a junior tempter, the dangers of true pleasures.
      "Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's [remember--Enemy to the devil Screwtape means God!] ground.  I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours.  He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.  All we can do is to encourage the humans to take pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways or in degrees, which He has forbidden.  Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula...
       The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy [remember--God!] has furnished him.  To get him away from those is always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable to substitute the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion, for a human's own real likings and dislikings...I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even it if is a fondness for country cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa.  Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust.  The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack."
     Thank You, Lord, for C.S. Lewis!  And thank You for the gift of pleasures...for You are the Creator and Giver of all good gifts.  Thank You for a good book in front of a warm fire, for a big piece of chocolate cake, for a steaming mug of hot tea, for a bracing walk with a beloved dog, for a gasp of delight in the fall colors, for the scent of pine and cinnamon, and for the unfathomably wondrous love of family and friends.  So many pleasures and people--oh thank You, Abba.
      To God be the glory.