A few thoughts

Hey all.

The Lord has given me a choice this week. I feel lifeless and dead. However, his name is still to be praised. This passage from C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters is what I've been living. I didn't even realize it until last night. I was so focused on trying to get myself back to "feeling normal" that I completely over looked the fact that I am trying to live Christianity in my own strength.

Read this:

Whenever they [the humans] are attending to the Enemy Himself [God] we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds are trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.

Isn't that an incredible thought? How often do we chase a "feeling" or a "way of life" instead of running hard after the Lord? How we feel about things, our perspective on life may change from day to day, but he is constant. What am I chasing? What do I have my eyes set on?

Well....I probably won't write again for a while.....I'm heading off to Chicago tomorrow to see one of my two favorite guys! (The other is in his forties and lives in Michigan ;-)

Love you all.

-Julie