This week my To Do list is nothing but sending a few e-mails to churches setting up services and comedy shows and then A TON OF READING. I’ve got a big ol stack of books I’ve got to get through to prepare for next year.
If you want to follow what books I’m reading and what I think of them, I restarted my Good Reads account. You can find it here.
Last week I finished C.S. Lewis’ THE PROBLEM OF PAIN. It’s really great. I took a ton of notes on every chapter except the one about why animals feel pain because I genuinely did not care. I’m really sorry if that offends you but I just need to be honest.
Here is probably my FAVORITE paragraph from the whole book:
“The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, please, and merriment, He scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
YES! YES! YES! That’s so good I could slap you right in the face. I love that. What a beautiful way to look at the happiest and warmest moments of our life. YES! I want to scream this paragraph at strangers on the street.
Also, let us never forget that C.S. Lewis wrote a children's book where Santa Claus shows up and gives everyone weapons.
Also also, did you know that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien went to the movies together and saw Disney’s Snow White? They did. And they hated it. They especially hated how dumb the dwarves were. They wrote letters about it. You can read about that here.