Monday, June 13, 2016

pay attention!


Lewis tells us today about God's miracles in A Year with C.S. Lewis.

Did you know that C.S. Lewis died the exact same day as Aldous Huxley? (JFK died that same day, 11/22/63) This brings us to our first concept today. In Huxley's book The Island, he tells us of a myna bird that flies around the island and occasionally screams "Attention!" Which enables people living on the island (Huxley insists) to live in the moment, neither worried about the future nor regretting the past.

The idea of "paying attention" comes into our reading today, and it applies twice!

Lewis tells us that when Jesus performed miracles, He was only doing in a "small and focused" way what God is doing all of the time in letters too huge for us to read, written across the face of history. A simple example is turning water into wine. Jesus did it in a moment...God does it every year...rain water is gathered by grape vines and transformed into grape juice which ferments into delicious wine.
Lewis tells us that Jesus is inviting us to "pay attention!" as He shows us the tender love of God written in letters small enough for us to read.

But the second way that "pay attention" comes into our story is when we begin to make the attempt (and it's very worthwhile!) to see His hand writing bigger letters in our own lives. See, He is always writing in your life. And He is always hearing your prayers. Many of them (perhaps even most of them?) He answers in the affirmative. But we're like little children who come into our parent's room and ask for a toy, and then give up and run out before the parent has even said yes or no. A few days later, when the parent buys the toy and gives it to the child, the little one may not even remember asking for it.

So we do with God. We ask and we forget. But it doesn't have to be that way. We can remember. We can look back over our lives and see His hand tracing enormous letters that we can only read in hindsight. Keeping a journal helps with this. But even just asking Him to show us how He's writing our story, we can find insights. And His story in our lives can take our breath away.

God, thanks for writing in big letters. Please teach me to read.

4 comments:

Julie said...

Wow, that was very deep Jeff. God does have a way with things and us. But we have to be receivers eager to see what He is doing/showing us.

Unknown said...

I worked in DeafEd for a bit. Love the sign for "Pay Attention" Can see it throughout your blog. Thank you, Jeff. Needed this today

Marcia Tapp said...

I am so glad that He is writing my story. He's an epic Author with a keen eye for details.

Unknown said...

Blessing in disguised I found this article/blog. It helps me a lot. Thank you.