Hopes & Fears

I spent this past weekend with my older brother, secluded in a tiny cabin the mountains just outside of Santa Cruz. For those who don’t know where Santa Cruz is, it’s on the California coast, somewhere between Los Angles and “The City” (Not “San Fran,” not “Frisco,” but “the City”). The whole purpose of the weekend was to keep a fire going in the wood-burning stove so we didn’t freeze to death and work on a feature-length script.

The second draft is beginning to shape up and this time around it includes some “holiday” themes. This, and the fact that Christmas is rapidly approaching, trained my mind back on a thought I was musing over recently.

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” It’s interesting how hopes and fears can be tied up in the same thing. Jesus coming into our lives brings fulfillment to both of these elements of our spiritual lives.

We hope, so desperately, for the freedom that He brings, yet at the same time we are afraid of what that will mean and the change that will bring to the comfort of the lives we lead. Freedom comes at a high price to the status quo. That seems like an obvious one, yet it’s as if people think that bringing radical change into their lives will only mean radical change to the parts that they didn’t like very much to begin with. The hopes and fears are met in the same body.

The fears may sound like a very negative aspect of what Jesus is supposedly all about. But when you think about it, they are only fears because we name them so. They are not fears because they are inherently bad or scary. They are fears because we’ve grown used to the way things are and fear that we won’t be able to survive any kind of change.

“Let my lungs issue the resounding cry: ‘I love you, Lord. My Papa. My Brother. My Intimate Friend. I desire you and crave you invading every aspect of who I am. Take my hopes and fears and transform them both in the light of your love.’” – The Adopted One

Here’s another photo from the drive home, somewhere between LA and “The City”.

Faith, Hope, Love,
Ry

Quotes: The C.S. Lewis Edition

Well, friends… after several months of silence and some gentle prodding from some of you (you know who you are… Jim and Stef), I really felt like it’s high time for me to write something. It’s been quite a busy few months (which is just the kind of excuse you were expecting, right?). Well, to quote Nickel Creek, “Others have excuses, I have my reasons why.”

There’s the first quote. The first of many for this post. Now, you may be thinking that this is sort of a copout, doing a whole blog post of quotes. You may say to yourself, “After three months shouldn’t he have something original to say?” Well, maybe you’re right. But! But! Over the last three months I’ve read some pretty good books and heard some pretty good words from pretty good people. About three months ago I started carrying around a “quote book.” It’s just a little notebook that I carry around in my pocket all the time so I can write down whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it. So I’ll empty some of the contents here.


Quote One:
“Now the Enemy’s philosophy is nothing more nor less than one continued attempt to evade this very obvious truth. He aims at a contradiction. Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This impossibility He calls Love, and this same monotonous panacea can be detected under all He does and even all He is – or claims to be. Thus He is not content, even Himself, to be a sheer arithmetical unity; He claims to be three as well as one, in order that this nonsense about love may find a foothold in His own nature.” - the elder demon in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

This just struck me as an awesome reminder of who God is and what He desires. That the relationship love that He has created us for is something that He lives out within Himself all the time. This is one of the favorite quotes of a band called "lessthanthree."


Quote Two:
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the place I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!” – Jewel the unicorn in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle.

Jon Foreman borrowed from this for the Switchfoot song “This Is Home” in Prince Caspian. It’s just so amazingly hopeful! The things that we find beautiful in this life, the things that fill us with any sense of longing, are just the faintest whispers of what we were created for.


Well... hopefully I'll post some more soon!

Faith, hope, love,
Ry