I’ve been writing this blog for eight and a half years. As far as I can remember, I haven’t missed a week. (Well, maybe one or two.)  Each one was by God’s grace and faithful enablement. But this week, I couldn’t seem to pull a good article together. So please give me grace and enjoy this writing by C.S. Lewis whose vision far surpasses mine just as a satellite’s view surpasses that of a child looking out from his tree fort. Savor this message, and turn it over in your mind. Ask God’s Spirit to open your eyes to the Scriptural truths explained so beautifully here. I chose excerpts that particularly spoke to me.  If you find some thoughts incomplete, please blame the abridger!  I’ve added Scripture verses that came to mind as I read these Lewis passages and I’ve highlighted parts that jolted me awake. Which ones opened your eyes?  Disclaimer:  This is profound.  You may need to re-read this more than once to absorb all the godly wisdom.

Excerpts from C.S. Lewis in “Weight of Glory”.
Preached originally as a sermon in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on June 8, 1942:

On Heaven- “Heaven is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience. . . If Christianity could tell me no more of the far-off land [Heaven]than my own temperament led me to surmise already, then Christianity would be no higher than myself. . . If it has more to give me, I must expect it to be less immediately attractive than “my own stuff. . . If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know”

“when the redeemed soul, . . . learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval, she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride. . . Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself. . . I can imagine someone saying that he dislikes my idea of heaven as a place where we are patted on the back. But proud misunderstanding is behind that dislike. In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised.

“ It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, . . . that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

“For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty Savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”  Zephaniah 3:17

“The master said, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’  Matthew 25:23

“Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.”  Jude 24

“For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being “noticed” by God. But
this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not,
as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (I Cor. viii.
3). It is a strange promise. Does not God know all things at all times? But it is dreadfully
reechoed in another passage of the New Testament. There we are warned that it may happen to any one of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words: “I never knew you. Depart from Me.” In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and
erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely
outside—repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can
be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.

“But whoever loves God is known by God.”  1 Corinthians 8:3

“ Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her.  When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which — if you saw it now — you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another — all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ —the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. (The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis)

The complete sermon is here:  https://www.wheelersburg.net/Downloads/Lewis%20Glory.pdf