I love books. Well-crafted books. Hardcovers, if I can get them. A cloth-covered, embossed book with deckled edges and the smell of a library or a print shop all over it is a feast for the senses to me. As a self-proclaimed bibliophile, one of my biggest daily regrets is that I haven’t had enough time to read.

And if “Who’s your favorite author?” is your next question, I will try very hard not to look too giddy and wide-eyed as I say, “C.S. Lewis!” Aside from being a Bible nerd and a lover of Luther’s acerbic wit, I know of no other author who can activate my imagination and engage my heart. The Chronicles of Narnia, where most people start their journey with Lewis. The often-overlooked Space (or Ransom) Trilogy. Creative Christian fantasy like The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. Lewis' many, fantastically-crafted works of religious philosophy. The modern reader can learn much from this Oxford don, and the contemporary Christian will be well-fed in devotional introspection and bolstered for a robust life of mission and witness.

As of late, I’ve been slowly digesting the chapters of Mere Christianity, arguably Lewis’s best and most accessible philosophical work. And just the other day, I read a passage that fit so well into the internal conversation I’ve been having with God. A pretty distinct “poke” in the plethora of nudges He routinely gives me. A gentle hand on my shoulder, to direct me where He wants our conversations here at Immanuel in the coming months to go. I just had to share it with you. Here it is:

"This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose ” (2001, p. 199).

So if God has placed us in this place, for such a time as this, for the purpose of shaping and crafting us into people who look like Him, shouldn’t we be paying attention to that? When Jesus models disciple-making by His own life and practice, then encourages us to do the same in His final “marching orders,” the Great Commission, shouldn’t that mean something to us? What does it look to walk in the footsteps of the Master? If making disciples, making embodiments of who Jesus is out of our everyday life, is what we were made for, will the gracious, loving God we serve not also, by His Spirit, give us what we need to accomplish His will? I am confident that He who started this work in us will bring it to completion when all is said and done (Phil. 1:6). Keep your eyes peeled and your ears attentive to a more in-depth conversation about this starting after the first of the year. But in the meantime,…

Adventure is out there! Pastor Aaron