Will Vaus

The movie Pearl Harbor tells of the events leading up to and immediately following the Japanese attack on the U.S. on December 7, 1941. The film follows the fictional lives of two fighter pilots, Raph and Danny, who have been inseparable friends since childhood and are stationed at the same base in Hawaii. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Raph (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett) are called into Colonel Jimmy Doolittle’s office. They have succeeded in downing seven Japanese planes. Doolittle (Alec Baldwin) stands behind his desk and addresses the cocky pilots somberly.  “You’ve both been awarded the silver star. You’re just about the only pilots with combat experience. I need you for a mission I’ve been ordered to put together.” Raph and Danny look nervously pleased. Doolittle looks them over carefully. “Do you know what ‘top secret’ is?” he asks. Raph responds with a wry smile. “Yes, sir! It’s the kind of mission when you get medals, but they send ...

Once again, I have something a bit different for today's post. Instead of text, I have a bit of audio for you to listen to. Here is a link to a message I preached on the lectionary text for today:  John 21:1-19 . This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible, one that has meant a lot to me personally. I have entitled the message: The Power to Start Over Again . I know it is something everyone needs at some point in life....

I thought I might try something new for this blog and see how it goes. My new idea is to try to write something every day based upon the lectionary reading from the Bible for that day. My plan is to follow the lectionary Gospel reading from  Sacred Space , an online devotional resource I have been using for some years. On some days my thoughts may be brief, on others I may have a sermon I have preached in the past on the particular lectionary text. So I begin today with one of those longer pieces. Let me know what you think.... I want you to imagine for a moment some great historical person, perhaps even someone from the distant past, someone you admire. Perhaps it is a great leader like George Washington or Eisenhower. Maybe it is a great writer or thinker, like Socrates or Shakespeare. Perhaps it is a humanitarian like William Wilberforce or Florence Nightingale. Do you have that person in mind? Now imagine further that historians have recently uncovered some hitherto unp...

We saw a lot during our four days in Oxford this year. We stayed at C. S. Lewis' former home, The Kilns, for two of those days. It was a joy to visit with my son James (pictured above) who is reading History at Oxford for a term. We worshipped at Lewis' home church, Holy Trinity Headington Quarry... toured the Bodleian Library... strolled around Addison's Walk (where Lewis had an important conversation with Hugo Dyson and J. R. R. Tolkien that precipitated Lewis' return to Christian faith)... And we saw so much more that I cannot begin to describe it all. If you would like to see more photos  (a lot more) then check out my Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/will.vaus . I will be happy to become your friend on Facebook if I am not already. Just ask!

Great Malvern (Wyvern in Surprised by Joy ) is where C. S. Lewis spent a number of his school days as a boy. He began at Cherbourg Preparatory School (pictured above) and it was here that he lost his Christian faith and became an atheist, sometime between the age of 13 and 15. From Cherbourg, Lewis won a scholarship to attend Malvern College (in the same town). Lewis' rooms were in School House. Though the school is one of the best in England and quite beautiful, Lewis was unhappy here. Largely this was the case because the focus at the time was on sports and Lewis was never good at games. One place Lewis did enjoy was the Gurney, the college library, where he drunk deep from the well of many ancient mythologies. The other great blessing of Malvern to Lewis was his classics teacher, H. W. Smith. "Smewgy" passed on to Lewis a love of poetry and reading poetry aloud. The Lewis brothers often visited Malvern in later life. They would usually stay ...

This is the view from our hotel window in Donegal, Ireland, today. The last time I was here was 33 years ago. I was nineteen then and questioning many things about Christianity. By the time I reached Donegal, on my four week solo tour of the British Isles, I had a powerful head cold and outside my tiny B&B the rain was pouring down. There was nothing for me to do but lie in bed and read. So I picked up Mere Christianity  by C. S. Lewis. When I read these words, I found many of my questions answered.... Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would he nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in the...

For the past several days my friend Russ Head and I  have been touring C. S. Lewis' Ireland, scouting locations for a future CSL educational tour. I will share here a few of the sites we have seen, following as much as possible the chronology of Lewis' life. Lewis was born at Dundela Villas in East Belfast, Northern Ireland, on November 29, 1898. Lewis was baptized by his maternal grandfather, The Reverend Thomas Hamilton, in St. Mark's Dundela, in January 1899. In 1905, the Lewis family moved to this house which Lewis' father had built in what was then the countryside on the outskirts of Belfast. They named it Little Lea. Here C. S. Lewis composed and illustrated his first stories about Boxen in the Little End Room on the third floor. The window to that room is just visible in the photo above. Lewis' boyhood imagination must have been stirred by the Irish landscape filled with castles like Carrickfergus (above) and the beauty of places he saw along the A...

Since we have finished up our study of The Apostles' Creed, far quicker than I originally thought we would, I am going to take a break from blogging for the next ten days or so. Then I hope to be back with some posts from Ireland and England where I will be from April 22-May 8, scouting locations for a future C. S. Lewis Tour.

Reepicheep, the Valiant Mouse, in the New Narnia To my mind, one of the most wonderful descriptions of everlasting life, outside of the Bible, is that written by C. S. Lewis in The Last Battle , the final book in the Chronicles of Narnia  series. As most of my readers will remember, at the end of the book, Lucy, Edmund, and Peter, three children whom we first met in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , experience a railway accident in our world and suddenly find themselves in a strange land that is incredibly beautiful and breathtaking in its splendor. Within this land they discover many of the people whom they loved in their life on earth and in Narnia. While the children are still trying to figure out exactly where they are, they discover something even better about this special land; Aslan, the great Lion, the Lord of Narnia, is there. Lewis writes, The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-coloured cliffs led up in front of the...

In The Apostles' Creed we confess not only belief in the resurrection of the body but also in the life everlasting What is that life going to be like? To get a glimpse, one place we can turn for answers is Revelation 21:1-5.... Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,   “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”   And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” From t...