The Christianity Lewis espouses is humane, but not easy: it asks us to recognize that the great religious struggle is not fought on a spectacular battleground, but within the ordinary human heart, when every morning we awake and feel the pressures of the day crowding in on us, and we must decide what sort of immortals we wish to be.

GIVE ME PATIENCE How right you are to see that anger (even when directed against oneself) “worketh not the righteousness of God.” One must never be either content with, or impatient with, oneself. My old confessor (now dead) used to impress on me the need for the 3 Patiences: patience with God, with my neighbour, with oneself. —from a letter to Mar

GOD’S UNAVOIDABLE PRESENCE What can you ever really know of other people’s souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your

For reflection: Isaiah 1:18 It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost His crucifixion. —from Mere Christianity