Nov
22
2008
Love Beyond Our Desiring
In awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of [God's] love.
You asked for a loving God; you have one.
The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the “lord of terrible aspect,” is present;
not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way,
not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate,
not the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests,
but the consuming fire himself,
the Love that made the worlds,
persistent as the artist’s love for his work
and despotic as a man’s love for a dog,
provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child,
jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes…
It is certainly a burden of glory not only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moments of grace, beyond our desiring.”
- C.S. Lewis – The Problem of Pain, 46-47.