Forgive me if this entry is a little long. There are some feelings that I need to get out. I feel that I need to start with an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (1942,
My Dear Wormwood,
So, you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? ...Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully, you would have seen this undulations in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty…
Now it may surprise you to learn that in His (the Savior’s) efforts to get permanent possession of the soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us (demons) a human is primary food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours… But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, he wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least form their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is through such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…He cannot tempt to virtue…He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hands; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why hey has been forsaken, and still obeys. (Emphasis added)
I feel like I am going through a trough. I have had so many trials and heartache during the past few years that I am beginning to wonder when it is going to end. I am beginning to wonder how I am going to get the strength to go on. I know that school is only a month away, but it seems like that month might as well be a year.
There are several things that keep me going. One of them is a talk from Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entitled, Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence (BYU Devotional 3/19/1999), in which he quotes Hebrews 10: 35-36, 38-39:
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise…
…If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him…
…We are not of them who draw back unto perdition. (Emphasis added.)
I do not want to stop climbing the mountain just before I get to the top, even if it is obscured by fog. Although I do not look like it, I am familiar with weight lifting. I am aware of the theory that says that it is when the muscle has been worked so much that it can barely function, and a spotter is required, that the most growth occurs.
I know that with Jesus at my side I have the best spotter in the world. I also know that I am surrounded by a team of spotters who are my friends and family. I also know that I am meant to do most of the work. I am thankful for all of you who are spotting for me, praying for me, calling me, and encouraging me. Your support means the world to me and I could not do it without you. I will keep you posted of my progress.
Love,
Mark
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