Sunday Morning Musings

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same...Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

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The Grand Picture

C. S. Lewis once wrote to a young woman who feared that God's foreknowledge made her prayers meaningless. She imagined God as a distant observer who had "known for millions of years" what she would say. Lewis gently corrected her. God hears us now, he said, as simply and at once as a mother hears her child. The difference is that God's "now" is infinite. Our present moment slips away even as we name it, but His present does not pass. To Him, every moment is fully present. We do not pray into a void or into a timeline already sealed; we pray into the living presence of the One who is eternally here. As the psalmist says, "One day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere" (Psalm 84:10). The comfort is not in understanding God's relation to time, but in knowing that when we step into prayer, we step into His presence.

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Never Cut a Deal with the Devil

From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis (paraphrased): "Just as Eustace reached the edge of the pool, two things happened. First, it struck him like a thunderclap that he had been running on all fours—and why on earth had he been doing that? Then, as he leaned toward the water, he thought for a moment that another dragon was staring back at him. But in an instant, he realized the truth. The dragon's face in the water was his own reflection, moving when he moved, opening and closing its mouth in sync with his. He had turned into a dragon while asleep. Resting on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself."

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The Stone Bridge of Grace

There once lived a people who resided on a high, barren mountain, living their whole lives there on the mountain peak. However, they could see that there was a place of infinite beauty far below, stretching to the horizon—a place they called Paradise. It could be seen thousands of feet below—so close, but so hard to reach, because in doing so one had to descend down a slippery slope that passed terrifyingly close to a lake of fire.

Life was hard on the rocky mountain, with only a few oases to relieve the boredom and frequent misery. Their only choice was the barroom or the church.

The church provided fellowship and guidance in the form of a map that traced a long and arduous trail around the mountain to the other side, with a bridge that promised a way over the lake of fire. The church also revealed an infallible guiding star to keep them from wandering off the trail.

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 I would like to tell you a story today that came to mind after I wrote the following letter to the editor a few years ago. It went something like this:

Dear Editor,

I must agree with those who have expressed bewilderment as to why the military is using the skies over our wilderness areas for combat exercises. I, as an individual citizen, cannot drive a motorized vehicle into a wilderness area, but a jet can fly in and scare the bejesus out of every living thing in its path, starting wildfires and littering the forest with debris!

My question is this: why not use the White Sands Missile Range for their exercises? That was why it was forcibly taken from ranchers so many decades ago. And a lot of that, I believe, was excessive use of eminent domain to steal private property, but that is a story for another day.

Today is that day.

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When Escapism Becomes a Vicious Circle of Life

I've been thinking this week about the strange ways we try to build ourselves up when we're young—how we reach for heroes, philosophies, and identities that promise strength, but often leave us more fragile than before. As you have probably noticed, I often quote C.S. Lewis, and I think it is about time I tell you why. So, as I often do, I'll let C.S. Lewis have the first word:

"Selfish, not self-centered: for in such a life, my mind would be directed towards a thousand things, not one of which is myself. The distinction is not unimportant. One of the happiest men and most pleasing companions I have ever known was intently selfish. On the other hand, I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration."

Reading this reminds me of the feud between Lewis and Ayn Rand. Lewis was highly educated and intelligent, yet humble and realistic about the human condition. Rand, on the other hand, was equally intelligent but conceited and overly cynical. Her stance1 on the virtue of selfishness might have been more meaningful had it been balanced with humility and an awareness of circumstance. In other words, "there but for the grace of God go I."

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"Give us Barabbas!"

Dateline Jan. 2026.. Minneapolis, Minnesota: There's a pattern that repeats itself in every age, as old as Babel and as fresh as this morning's headlines. You can see it in the crowds, in the slogans, in the strange fever that takes hold of otherwise ordinary people. You can see it in the way a single spark of outrage becomes a wildfire, how a chant becomes a creed, how a grievance becomes a god.

We like to imagine that these things are new, that our moment is uniquely unhinged. But Scripture has been telling us the same story since Genesis: the human heart is a restless, fallen thing, and when it gathers with other restless, fallen hearts, it becomes something more dangerous than any one person could ever be alone.

For those of you who have not read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, I suggest you do. She sketched this truth in the sharp lines of her novel's characters—Wesley Mouch, the bureaucratic opportunist; James Taggart, the moral posturer; Orren Boyle, the crony capitalist; Cuffy Meigs, the brute enforcer. Her prophetic 1957 novel was full of the same characters that are destroying our nation today. Although she was writing fiction in secular form, she was naming what Scripture had already diagnosed.

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                                                                                                        Nature and nature's God                                                                                                                            

I've been thinking this week about a strange irony that C.S. Lewis pointed out. Taking a cue from Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:21, he said the world calls preaching "foolish," yet it is that very "foolishness" that God uses to melt hearts. Shakespeare said it another way: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The modern mind may smirk at the pulpit, but Heaven smiles at the power behind it.