Tea with C.S. Lewis
Yesterday Ellen and I saw Max Mclean’s movie “The Most Reluctant Convert.” It is really outstanding. Max narrates and plays Lewis in the story of C. S. Lewis’s conversion from atheism, but, as he shows, it’s really the story of God. Lewis didn’t set out to find God; rather, God set out to find this hardened and lonely Oxford professor. God made it happen from beginning to end. He loved Lewis into loving him: from atheism to a vague sort of theism - to reluctant follower of Jesus Christ. It was God who is rich in mercy (Eph 2:4) that brought him to faith, to forgiveness, and finally to repentance. It’s all from God’s side who would not give up on one of his children. If you think it’s about you (you finding him, you choosing him, raising your hand when all heads are bowed and eyes closed), you are missing the fact that a dignified Middle-eastern father wouldn’t be caught dead “running” in fancy robes, much less throwing his loving arms around a completely disreputed son, but this is what God did for Lewis and what he does for us. “You did not chose me, but I chose you,” Jesus said (Jn 15:16). He will find us and overtake us. Our stubbornness and ingratitude won’t deter him, not even for a minute. And even though we are, as Dane Ortland says, “factories of fresh resistances to Christ’s love,” if you feel something clipping at your heals to become part of a reunion of eternal dimensions and value, it’s definitely the hound of heaven.
Francis Thompson died on this day, November 13, 1907. He famously wrote the 182-line poem “The Hound of Heaven” about the hound who single-mindedly pursues his catch across the countryside for as long as it takes. This was Thompson’s story. God never gave up on him even when he was living on the streets of London in the pits of opium addiction. God never stopped his pursuit. And even though Thompson’s grave today is overgrown, neglected and almost impossible to find in a cemetery on the outskirts of Manchester England, the rejoicing continues in heaven over one sinner who made his way home. Maybe Francis Thompson will be there, quietly sitting on the edge in quiet thanksgiving.
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fed Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears...
Naked I waited Thy loves's uplifted stroke!”
This one-way-love that never stops is what Christians call grace. “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unloveable” (Paul Zahl). Grace is what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion. All the other religions instruct us to do something: to climb an achievement ladder, to make certain pilgrimages, to quiet dissonant voices in order to show God our faithfulness and attention. Christianity emphatically says, “It’s not your faithfulness that counts, but God’s!” While other religions say, “you get what you deserve,” Christianity says we get what we don’t deserve because God is a gracious Heavenly Father who is kind to the ungrateful and wicked (Luke 6:35). He loved them to the end (John 13:1).
Only God knows how many people have come to see Jesus as loving Father by reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Maybe there will be an afternoon tea in heaven where Lewis and Joy Davidman can meet with those who know and love God because God used them in this way. And perhaps Francis Thompson will be there too, quietly on the edges with a smile of thanksgiving.
The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, Dane Ortland
The Practice of Grace, Paul F.M. Zahl
By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Us, Sinclair B. Ferguson