Looking for More

Looking for More

 At some point prayer needs to become more than an appointment on my calendar or a check mark on my to do list. Somehow it needs to be more than an answer to guilt. If I am to know God the way He wants me to my life of prayer should grow into more.

CS Lewis was the author of the widely read children’s books, The Narnia Chronicles, as well as many novels for grown-ups and books on issues surrounding the Christian faith. The movie Shadowlands (directed by Richard Attenborough and produced in 1993) tells Lewis’ story, focusing in particular on his relationship with his wife, Joy Gresham. Gresham and Lewis meet while Lewis is a don at Oxford University.

 After Joy is diagnosed with cancer the couple marry. The movie invites us to witness their love, their pain, their grief, their struggles with faith and God. Eventually Joy dies.

 At one point in the story a friend says to Lewis, “Christopher can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you’ve been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.”

 Lewis replies “That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.”

 “I pray because I can’t help myself.” That my desire, but not yet my reality. I can help myself and do so frequently.  I can only offer the righteousness of God, in exchange for my own.
His worthiness for my unworthiness, His faithfulness for my treachery, His devotedness for my waywardness, His holy life for my less than holy ways and his death for my life.

 As I understand my helplessness more each day, I see my great need. As I see my need more and more then I know I want to pray, need to. Looking for more means, I guess, that I have to see myself as less.