Snap By Snap

I almost just deleted my previous post (9/14/10). Mostly because I was thinking it didn't jive well enough with my "snap by snap" blog theme. Not enough about pictures - too many rambling thoughts. But then I re-read it and liked it again, so it stays. It's my blog, so I guess I can do that, right? Re-reading my ramblings led me to some other ramblings by a much more profound thinker - C.S. Lewis. My steps feel weary lately, and this quote from Mere Christianity was just exactly what I needed:

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

We are so easily distracted by our list of to-do's every morning, that we fail to come in out of the wind - to look for the quiet. To choose it.

More pictures next time . . .