(HT: Thank you much to Jill Antolin for bringing these words to mind from C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain)

I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never meant to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had for me but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over–I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.

- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pp. 106-107

I connect so much with these words that Lewis wrote. It seems like there are these world-shattering moments of fear and complete helplessness, when I am so ready to rely on God and submit everything to him in prayer, but then daily life comes and the monotony of it all can be equally shattering to the strength of my faith in God. It is so easy not to take complete joy in Christ and to not be grieved by my own sin or hard-heartedness, and yet when I become fearful, there I am, begging him to keep me safe. Is it not a great wonder that he doesn’t cast us off? And is it not an odd coincidence that we look at the continued lack of faith in God on the part of the Israelites following Moses following God, and yet we think we would never be so blind and stupid; or that we look at the disciples in their constant ignorance about Christ and his sovereignty and lordship, and think we would never be so foolish? It is important to remember just how foolish we are, and how most of us have not by any means made any great progress beyond these fellow fools. God have mercy; God be pleased to grant us the grace to take joy in what he takes joy, and to be grieved over what he is grieved by.