For the new year

From C.S. Lewis

I am reading a book by C.S.Lewis called “the world’s last night” in it is a short article called “religion and Rocketry”. The article discusses the possibility of life outside our planet and the implications of that possibility to Christianity. Many who don’t believe in God or in Christ use this possibility as an argument against both God as creator and his son Jesus as redeemer. I recommend reading the book and especially this short article.

Lewis asks 5 questions, I was most provoked to thought by question 3.

“If there are any rational species other than man, are any or all of them, like us, fallen? This is the point that non-christians always seem to forget. They seem to think that the incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies the reverse: a particular demerit or depravity. No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it. Notice what waves of utterly unwarranted hypothesis these critics of Christianity want us to swim through. We are now supposing the fall of hypothetically rational creatures whose mere existence is hypothetical!”

Paul in his letter to the believers in Rome said this: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:6-8 NIV

We don’t have to be good for God to love us. He just does. He came to earth not that he needed us but that we need him.

It is a new year today, 2020. I am struggling for new ways to say the same old thing. Right now I’m gazing at our beautiful Christmas tree completely covered in sparkles and shiny and color. Light is refracted and reflecting every which way. I’m thinking that If I could turn a phrase like a twisting ornament and flash truth just right so it can sparkle into a heart and mind so that someone understands in a new way, the love that God has shown us in sending us Jesus, that would be a fantastic gift to end this Christmas season and start a new year.

Is it you today?