In Dr. Bob’s chapel message today he used a really good C. S. Lewis quote:
“I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ.”
C.S.Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (1940)
I really like what Lewis says here, and I can really identify with it. So often I let the “toys” in my life, the gifts that God has given me, replace the real reason I live, to enjoy the gift giver himself. He is a treasure so much better than these finite things, things that can be lost and destroyed so easily.