But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says:
“When he ascended on high,
    he took many captives
    and gave gifts to his people.”
(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

• Ephesians 4:7-13

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
    It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
    like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
    and makes its circuit to the other;
    nothing is deprived of its warmth.

• Psalm 19:1-6

“Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive ‘apart from his Christianity’. Now, I veritably believe, I thought-I didn’t of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense-that Christianity itself was very sensible ‘apart from its Christianity’. But I hardly remember, for I had not long finished The Everlasting Man when something far more alarming happened to me. Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. ‘Rum thing,’ he went on. ‘All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.’ To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of toughs, were not-as I would still have put it-‘safe’, where could I turn? Was there then no escape?”

• C.S. Lewis, Preparing for Easter (from Surprised by Joy, chapter “Checkmate”)

Boilerplate

First, the concept of Lent is the preparation for what is to come, the anniversary of Christ’s death and resurrection between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  But in some denominations, the entire time from Advent, the anticipation of Christ’s coming (remembrance of His birth but preparation for His return) to Easter (Christ’s resurrection from the dead)…  This bracket of time is a celebration of the entire life of Jesus Christ on earth.  Christ’s conception to His ascension and on to the Holy Spirit coming upon the Apostles at Pentecost can be presented and celebrated from early December until Pentecost Sunday.

Many denominations only focus on Christmas and Easter, or maybe the entirety of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Easter, and then may or may not focus on Pentecost.

But for those that recognize Lent, the Lenten season in many denominations has an element of fasting.  Sadly, this is done as Jesus teaches us not to do.  They make a big deal out of it when we should do it in private, something just between us and God.  But that tradition stems from the forty days of fasting that Jesus did in the wilderness after His baptism and before His ministry started.  The Lenten season is kicked off on Ash Wednesday.  And after forty days, we reach Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.  The concept of ashes is symbolized by at least one denomination having a cross painted on their forehead in ashes, sometimes from burning the palm fronds from the previous Palm Sunday the year before.  Again, that draws attention to the fact that they have started their fast.  But they are also announcing that they are Christians.  There is good and bad there.

So, when we are in the Lenten season, what should we focus on?  It depends.  We should focus on Jesus, but we might want to focus on our service to God.  What can we do better?  How can we spread the Gospel?  From Conception to Pentecost…  His mission was completed on earth, but He left us with something to do.

As for the Lewis book, it comes from a compilation of Lewis’ writings, edited by Zachry Kincaid.  In the book, there is a devotion, of sorts, from Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday, the Lenten Season.  Each devotion contains suggested Scriptures and a writing of C.S. Lewis.

I am going to use my free time posts, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons (EDST) to correspond with that day’s devotion in the book.

Discussion

This quote from C.S. Lewis and the accompanying quote in Tomorrow afternoon’s post, The Encounter, are excerpts from his biography and testimony, Surprised by Joy.  C.S.  Lewis was an atheist, misgivings starting in boarding school and cemented on the front line in World War I.  He made a friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson.  Some nights they might argue all night long.  Sometimes, Lewis and Tolkien would take long walks, arguing the entire time.  Tolkien was Catholic.

In one of these all-night sessions, either Tolkien or Dyson asked Lewis, “Why are you so passionately angry at a God that you claim you do not believe in?”  He later admitted that was one of the first chinks in his armor.

But here, in the first of the two quotes, he comes to a crossroad.  He now has so many chinks in his armor that he cannot paint enough liquid metal on to repair them all.  He even gets to the point where he realizes that there is something out there that accounts for all the things for which he cannot find an accounting.  Later in this chapter, he calls it “spirit”, bound and determined to never give in and call it “God.”

So, after his defenses of the “faith” to which atheists adhere…

I know.  Atheists say they have no religion and no faith, but as Mark Lowry said to the first atheist that he ever met, “You have more faith than me.  I don’t have enough faith to think that all this universe came into being just by chance.”  I put that in quotes, but I did not bold and italics the text.  I am probably paraphrasing.

So, if you are on the front lines in a battle and you have no strength to carry on, what do you do?

You call in reinforcements.  Lewis had an atheist friend that was such a staunch atheist, he would have answers to help restore C.S. Lewis’s armor back to fighting strength.

His friend only said, “Rum thing.”  Then he went on to add, “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.”

How would you like to hear your hero say, “I have no answers for you”?

His friend would not go on to accept Jesus, at least make no claim to that sort, but he knew he was defeated.  If you really studied and you had an open mind, there was no evidence to combat the overwhelming evidence that God really exists, and all this on earth and in the universe was his handiwork.  And this was in the 1920s before the DNA research and genome research and microscopic research into those simple one-cell organisms, as Darwin called them, that are far beyond simple.

Here, until tomorrow’s installment, Lewis is left, surrounded by his Christian enemy (his close friends).  As he says, “where could I turn? Was there then no escape?”

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.