You asked for a loving God: you have one

It's been a few days, hasn't it? I just thought I would share with you all something that I read this morning in C.S. Lewis's book called "The Problem of Pain".

"When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His 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, nor 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."

-C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pg. 39

Pretty beautiful huh? I was reading it this morning and thought, "Dang. Nice job C.S. Lewis".

I then continued reading and came across this part a few pages later:

"But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense all His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give and nothing to receive."

pg. 43

I don't have time to analyze it all. Let alone, share how I relate to this in full detail. But I see that it is something that I may never fully understand. I see now that I am currently trying to understand what love is, in all sorts of ways and matters and understand my own heart. I can now see that I've carried many false beliefs about how to act and what it means to be 'loving'. I've said this or done that, thinking I was acting in a loving way, but really, I was only avoiding confrontation and not digging deeper into the true depths of love. And I'm learning what it means to love myself and hopefully catch a glimpse of the amazingness of God's love for me.

To learn more about CS Lewis and some of his sweet works, you should all check out my dear friend's blog. Her name is Kara, and she is beautiful and wonderful and quite smart (I have to give her a shout out. HI KARA!!! Love you!). :) She's going through his book called "The Four Loves" which I also greatly enjoyed. Go here and check out.