Inkling

In what I believe to be the greatest sermon ever preached (my Lewis bias once again exposed), The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis said this about the day when we come face to face with God:

In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other; either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us.

A lot of spirituality these days spends a great deal of time reminding us over and over again about the grace and love of God. And so it should be. As an extension of that thought we also talk a lot about how God accepts as we are and that God loves us unconditionally. And so it should be. The prodigal son is the parable that speaks best to all this.

But often the conversation ends before we talk about what God fully thinks of us. He loves us – but is there a yearning on his behalf that we would be different? Not unlike the father that goes to bail his son out of jail. He loves the boy – unconditionally. That’s why he stops at the ATM along the way to get the necessary cash to spring his offending offspring. But that is just part of the story. What he fully thinks of his son is that he better get his act together or a wasted life is ahead.

If, as Jesus tells us, he is the vine and his Father is the vinedresser and he prunes the branches that don’t bear fruit and throws them into the fire – then it seems that we should be paying a lot of attention to what the Father thinks of us.

Or to put it another way -- I guess each day God loves us enough to try to keep us from becoming the branches he might throw away. In that spirit prayer is the effort to explore with God what he fully thinks about the fruit of our life and to ask for the Spirit’s help to produce more of it. Prayer is the continued conversation with the Almighty all the way to the point when his face is turned upon us. We wouldn’t want to be surprised at his expression.