Ending a Chapter

On 21 November 1962 C. S. Lewis wrote to Mary Van Deusen:

"I think I share, to excess, your feeling about a move. By nature I demand from the arrangements of this world just that permanence which God has expressly refused to give them. It is not merely the nuisance and expense of any big change in one's way of life that I dread. It is also the psychological uprooting and the feeling -- to me, as to you, intensely unwelcome -- of having ended a chapter. One more portion of oneself slipping away into the past! I would like everything to be immemorial -- to have the same old horizons, the same garden, the same smells and sounds, always there, changeless. The old wine is to me always better. That is, I desire the 'abiding city' where I well know it is not and ought not to be found. I suppose all these changes shd. prepare us for the far greater change which has drawn nearer even since I began this letter. We must 'sit light' not only to life itself but to all its phases. The useless word is 'Encore!'"

Collected Letters, Volume III, p. 1383

"For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." Hebrews 13:14

Prayer: Father, help me to "sit light" to life and to all of its phases. Help me not to expect, nor try to maintain, here and now, the enduring city which is to come. May I realize that with the end of this earthly chapter there comes a story gloriously new, for which you have been fitting me as a character to take his part, through all the ins and outs, ups and downs, of my worldly journey. Thank you Jesus, for going before me to prepare a special room in our Father's house. And I thank you even more for the fact that when that room is ready you will come back and take me to yourself. Until then, help me by your Spirit to follow you, for you are the way, the truth and the life. Amen.

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Will Vaus

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