Still listening to Lewis

This week we had the second installment of our study of C .S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.  Lewis has been a long-time favorite author of mine.  As a kid I read The Chronicles of Narnia series and struggled through The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity.  Although Lewis wrote and lived in a different country and a different time, the words of his books still cut deep today. 

The opening of The Great Divorce takes place in an imaginary version of hell that is shockingly similar to the world we know.  The entire place is a single town that stretches for miles in every direction.  Although the city is one huge expanse, there are no lights in windows or people on the streets, only a handful of rude strangers waiting at a bus stop.  When the narrator asks another passenger on the bus where all the people stay and why the city seems so empty, the man explains how in hell your imagination is what determines reality.  Instead of waiting for a house to be built, a person only needs to think it into existence. Anyone can imagine a new house and move onto a new street whenever he or she wants.  Eventually, someone else moves onto the same street, and the two of them fight or disagree.  Then, they move away, farther away from everyone else in the city.  Because they can imagine anything into existence, they can travel thousands of miles away from each other, eventually finding a place they can be miserable by themselves. 

I read this description of hell many times over as I prepared this study because I was struck by the truth in this idea.  I am guilty of isolating myself from others for my own personal reasons.  I have kept my thoughts to myself; I have hidden my own concerns, my own faults and insecurities so no one can see them.  When we give in to our own tendencies and our own selfish desires, we all move further away from each other.  Sometimes we literally move away from other people, distancing ourselves from our neighbors and from other people groups.  I confess that sometimes I walk past my neighbors in my apartment complex without saying hello or even taking my eyes off the ground in front of me, and I have been guilty of not knowing their names, even though our apartment doors are in sight of each other.  I have no way of counting how many times I have missed an opportunity to be a friend because I was off somewhere else in my own head, and that's just when I think about the strangers next door.  How many times have my friends needed a kind word, and I had nothing to say?  When did my brother need encouragement or even just a smile, and I was nowhere around?  We distance ourselves emotionally, intellectually, and physically from anything or anyone we don’t like or understand to shield ourselves… from what?  And why? 

We are called by God to live in community with each other and in contact with the world around us.  Consider Paul who traveled, preached, made friends, and challenged others to live like Christ.  Think about how we are to serve together as a church, the connected and united body of Christ, rather than a collection of individuals standing alone.

Acts 2:42 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

…and if you get the chance, ask Samantha about the time she met the girl who played Susan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe film…  

I took this photo of The Sheep Dip Philosophical Society a couple of weeks ago.  Please forgive me for the poor quality; my camera isn't the greatest.  

Even in a 500 dollar car

A couple of weeks ago I left my apartment before day break to join the men of the Sheep Dip and Philosophical Society at Starbucks off 78.  I was impressed by the turnout; we took up three tables and even had to borrow chairs from the outside area to seat everyone.  The men gave me several things to think about, but one comment stuck in my head and bounced around in there all day.  It was said that we need to remember those times that we felt the presence of God in one of those special moments and we should hold onto that feeling even in times of despair. 

                That made me think of a recent time I felt the presence of God in the most unlikely of places.  In my free time I work on cars with my friends.  I’ve been wrenching on my own ride out of necessity since high school, and because I have no mechanical knowledge or sensibilities, the hobby has introduced me to many interesting people.  A new race series that is popular among car enthusiasts is the 24 Hours of Lemons, a spoof on a historical race that occurs in France every year.  The premise of Lemons is that each team of four or five drivers has to buy and prepare a car for less than 500 dollars and keep it running for roughly 16 hours broken into two sessions over a weekend.  My friends and I bought an old Honda Prelude off Craigslist, welded in a roll cage, and raced it in several events in Houston and Dallas.  In the Houston event last summer our car was running great.  Somehow it survived to the second day, which is a feat of mechanical know-how, or a miracle, I’m not sure which.  As the cars took to the track early that morning I climbed up on a tower towards the back of the track with a radio and a cup of coffee so I could watch the traffic for our driver.  As I sat up there on the platform with my legs hanging off the edge and a Styrofoam cup of coffee in my hand, I had a special moment.  As I looked out at the old junkyard cars running around on a racetrack I thought about the creativity of the engineers who had designed and built these cars ten, twenty, sometimes thirty years ago.  This is the creative nature of God that has been implanted in all of humanity.  I thought about all the hours that these people racing had put into fixing these cars, repairing broken engines, painting up the body panels to look like real race cars, and I thought about the inherent humor and ingenuity that lives in every child of God.  I reflected on the time I had spent with my friends prepping our little Honda, painting it neon green, driving it together, and I realized I was working in harmony with other creatures of God. 

God is everywhere.  God’s work can be seen in the faces of our neighbors, the hands of the worker, the humor of a joke on the radio, the colors of paint on a billboard, and everywhere else that our creative minds have been put to use.  Maybe it’s something obvious to everyone else that I somehow missed, but that moment I had while sipping coffee and watching old cars run around a track changed my perspective. 

That’s my thought from the road this morning.  Check back later this week for news from our Thursday night study.