First Post - Lent 2017 with C. S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

To restart the blog I decided to begin with something simple, recording part of my journey through Lent 2017. I have a morning devotional I am going through that was published by my church. For my evening devotions I am slowly and reading with great attention to something I have read before... "The Weight of Glory" by C. S. Lewis (order here). This is my post (copied from Facebook) on last night's reading:

"... it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us., like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
- C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

I find this an enlightening point of view. Earlier in the passage Lewis talks about how people think self-denial is the right thing to do, but he points out that in scripture self-denial is never posited as an ends unto itself. This is something especially important for Lent. People talk about giving up something for Lent but rarely why they gave that thing up. The purpose is not simply self-denial. Lent is a season of self-examination, a time to reevaluate what we think is important in life and why. We can use it as a time to say "This thing I believe I like really isn't important. In fact I can make my life better by not engaging in it." We can take another look at this in light of the passage from Lewis. Rather than saying "I am giving up X" how about "Instead of doing X I will do Y because it is better for me and my daily walk." Rather than just giving something up to give something up, perhaps we should say "I gave something up to get something better".