"The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?"
"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."
--Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, by C.S. Lewis
What image does that quote give you? How does it feel? To me the second quote invokes an image that I find absolutely inspiring.
I see Christ mounted on a horse, hiding Himself with a billowing cloak and a scarf that wraps around the lower half of his face. He rides through the night down dirty streets and alleyways packed with garbage, over muddy puddles and heaps of rotting waste, in the cold rain and the unkind wind, amid the highest of obscene brows and the most base temptations. His clothes are fraying and covered in all manner of filth and what little there is of His exposed skin is caked in mud and shit. His hands have conformed to the reigns and his legs are bruised from the long, long ride.
And underneath all this there is a terrible intensity in those barely visible eyes. The cloak and tunic relent for an instant in their struggle against the wind, exposing His forearm. It is scarred and bruised yet the thing is thick with muscles, with lean sinews and the strength to overturn mountains. Beneath the scarf He pants loudly. Only slightly concealed by the cloak, a sword is sheathed at His side. He draws the blade and a cloud of rust rises from it. It is long and heavy and chipped in places and it cuts the air now with a whistle and now with a roar.
There is a barricade up ahead, a wall of fleshly habits, worldly influences, and infernal power. The vast accumulation of sickly passions and words of articulate madness, all held together by a viciously ornate chain, leans against the perimeter of a polished, obsidian fortress. It is manned by ancient gods, by the angels of the vast emptiness who waited at the gates of Eden and ravaged the outcast bride when she finally emerged. They have my blessing.
He circles the stronghold. The air is astir with His movement and the power of His breaths, His heartbeat, His very presence in any area for so long lights up the sky with thunder and lightning. And this when He covers Himself. He has interrupted a royal feast in the pursuit, and a company of saints has been called to the walls. They raise up swords and shields and goblets from the feast and as He rides by He strikes His sword against the signs of their allegiance. The ringing of Heaven's armory shakes the fortress, makes the angles of the pit clutch their ears in agony, and penetrates to the deepest of my sanctuaries.
There is a rush of feral spirits and He strikes them down in a single stroke. The whole Earth trembles and the stones resonate with a song of praise as the display of His might. He calls the gatekeepers by name and commands that three doors be opened. They are swung wide and in He charges. Into the stronghold. Into the place of all my sin. Into the labyrinth of my degenerate heart of hearts.
I run and run and still He pursues. He is always behind me. I close a door on Him and with three knocks He reduces it to dust. Other times He leaves it up, but even then He is never far. He knows these corridors better than I ever could and at times I see them conform to His will. He is large enough to pass through even the tiniest of cracks.
And here's the thing: He is being kind. He is coming to bring me home, though I have forgotten it for the tiresome perversions of the very pleasures He made. He wars against me because He is for me. And how else could I keep running or the stronghold remain standing but for His mercy? Did the walls balk Him? Did my approval have such power that the fiends who keep me could stand in His full light? Did my feet outrun Him? He has come to take me home but He has also come to make me choose home. He will slowly seal me in the trap and force me to see the full truth, but if I still spit in His face He will turn away and leave, or at least for the moment. But I don't spit.
He impales me on that sword, cast from the iron of His own blood and the spear by which His sides were pierced. He stabs straight into my heart and out comes rich, brilliantly red blood that is so full of life and so long forgotten. I gape at it in wonderment; I had forgotten how beautiful that nectar was. And then He teaches me to die. Pinning me to the wall with that wonderful, terrible blade, He teaches me to truly die as only one who has truly lived can die. One so unlike myself who was born into faded and drunken death and built his home inside a tomb. I died to my unlife. I am dying still.
And it is a blessing.
"The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."
---C.S. Lewis
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
---Romans 8:38-39
"We love because he first loved us."
1 John 4:19
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