Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The Weight Of Glory

It is another aside from the movie "review" I posted about yesterday. And it concerns the child's love as well. For the boy in the film, his goal, his achievement in love was to be to have this particular girl notice him. He believed she didn't even know his name and set about correcting that. After a fervent chase scene, he manages to stand before her only briefly. He calls out her name, she responds in kind. And the boy can say nothing else. He is rendered speechless. She has noticed him. That more happens later is moot as this is the culmination of his story. When he appears back before his father, he is smiling, content, awed. Being noticed by her was his ultimate.

The idea of being noticed recalls to mind C.S. Lewis' greatest piece of writing: The Weight of Glory:

We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory... becomes highly relevant to our deep desire.

The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain.

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