Step Inside

My inspiration this morning comes from this excerpt from "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis:

Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?

This made me think of God as though in a vast, clear, shimmering bubble.  Most of us see the Bubble and we stand in awe of its beauty and brightness.  We agree that the Bubble is good.  If we stay close enough, we can even feel and feed off the energy that seeps through the the skin of the Bubble.  It gives us joy to be near it and we want to enter it.  But we are afraid.  In order to slip inside, we have to let go of some of the worldly things we love.  Or some of the ideas we have believed to be the truth but really aren't.

We have heard of people who have made it into the Bubble during their lifetime.  They are people who were filled with joy though their lives were hard.  They are people who lived their own lives helping others... not because they thought it would get them into the Bubble, but because they had been in the Bubble and they have found the true meaning and true joy of this world and they loved to give their lives for others.

Oh, the grace and love that can't be conained inside and must splash out upon us!  Can you imagine being totally immersed in it?  Step inside if you dare!

God of Love and Grace,
Help us to be truly united to you.  Help us to give up those things that hold us back so that we may step inside.  Amen.