We’ve been following the adventure of a writer who in a dream boards a bus on a drizzly afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell. This scene from The Great Divorce continues from where we left off, with the writer listening to the heavenly citizen George MacDonald (thus the older style English).
‘Do ye think so?’ said the Teacher with a piercing glance. ‘It is nearer to such as you than ye think. There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself. . . as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity they they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.’
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (1946, Harper Collins edition 2001) 73-74.
What a powerful truth in this reading today!
ReplyDelete"There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity they they never gave a thought to Christ."
Don't we sometimes get so caught up in doing things for Christ that we actually forget about him, at least about spending time with him, in his Word and in prayer?