On the First Warm Day in December

     I've been looking over the blog... Thankfully, college is long gone. Sadly, writing comes and goes. Other things fill their places, and the journey continues. Time is steady, regardless of my habits, failures, triumphs, or interests. And in the end, that’s what this blog is all about. It’s a journey.

     Today is lovely. So lovely that I’m sitting on the porch with my coffee and my dog and letting the warm breeze tousle my hair. Aside from the dead-looking trees, this might as well be a Mississippi April.

     Yesterday would have been the 114th birthday of C.S. Lewis. He and Tolkien often met at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, England. It looks like it would have been a cozy and happy place to discuss literature.

     In his book, The Four Loves, Lewis wrote, “In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” It is comforting to think of his friendship with Tolkien in these terms, and it is sweet to contemplate the timeless truth about God that he speaks of here.


(Stock photo)