"The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of lonigng, which just fades away in the reality...
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is hat I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death..."
--C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis is so wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThat quote reminds me of something John Piper says about fasting:
"The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get -for- Christ... the more homesick you get for heaven. [...] If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. [...] God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God, and it can be awakened." (A Hunger for God, p. 23)
i've heard all kinds of good things about john piper--i'll have to check him out =) good quote!
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