Given the gift-buying season that is drawing to a close (too soon of a close for some of us who are last-minute inclined) this C.S. Lewis classic is quite apropos. Maybe it's just me, but being a dad it hits even closer to home. Some of you will recognize this from his classic tome, Mere Christianity (emphasis mine).
Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, 'Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.' Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.One could easily delve quickly into a discussion of justification theology here, but it's almost Christmas and that's just far too heady right now. Rather, I believe, the simplicity of Lewis' statement should be allowed to stand on its own.
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