Friday, December 30, 2005

The point of blogging

I have read various explanations on other blogs of "why blog?". I've been giving this some thought since Aaron (my husband) doesn't really see the point. I think that's because he's a talker not a writer. But I've been thinking that there is a fine line here between glorifying God and glorifying myself. Am I writing just to express myself, or to express something greater? There is a great temptation for me just to enjoy writing and be impressed with my own ideas. The conclusion I have come to is that the reason I want to write anything should be because I can't contain my praise. That's why I write songs, poems, and this. I know this is a very common quote, but I'm going to use it anyway because it says what I want to say:

“[Lewis] I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . .

If it were possible for a created soul fully . . . to 'appreciate', that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. . . . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him."

C.S. Lewis of course.

So I'll keep writing, because when I don't, I forget how good He is and how amazingly blessed I am to know Him.

2 comments:

Mike Spreng said...

Hi Jul,

I think writing helps us to see who we really are, because with mere speach, it's very dificult to reflect on what we have said, resulting in dangerous and depressive introspection. Have your husband begin to write his thoughts down, and then revisit them in a week or two. He'll be amazed by what he sees. It's almost like a "spiritual mirror."

Mike Spreng
Yuma Refomed

dogimo said...

It's so hard to let go of that ingrained, worldly "show me" skepticism and just surrender, to "be in perfect love with God" as Lewis says. One can lose patience waiting self-importantly for personal revelations and miracles (that we don't really need), challenging God, "why don't you show yourself!"

Yet, when you do surrender, and you can experience that boundless joy, love, invisible support - can anything be sweeter?

There is a part of an otherwise bittersweet (yet essentially triumphant) song, that for me captures it best:

"I feel like I'm in love / with a stranger I've never known / although it's still a mystery I'm so glad I'm not alone" - Neil Finn, from the song "Anytime" (album One All)

If only there were a way to keep that certainty forever, to keep those doubts from creeping back in. Because, that feeling is the best.