Happy Are They

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship:

Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proved a fount of mercy.

How Jesus Deals With Us

In chapter 11 of Prince Caspian--perhaps my favorite book, though I feel that way about whatever volume on Narnia I'm currently reading--Lucy twice sees Aslan while the others, her three siblings and the dwarf Trumpkin, disbelieve her. She finally convinces them to follow her. Edmund supports her more than anyone, while Susan is (as Lewis would say) perfectly beastly to her. As far as Trumpkin is concerned, talking lions are a ridiculous fairy tale.

The party nevertheless follows Lucy, who in turn follows Aslan and is the only one who can see him. Eventually the lion turns around.

Aslan had stopped and turned and stood facing them, looking so majestic that they felt as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad. The boys strode forward: Lucy made way for them: Susan and the Dwarf shrank back.

"Oh, Aslan," said King Peter, dropping on one knee and raising the Lion's heavy paw to his face, "I'm so glad. And I'm so sorry. I've been leading them wrong ever since we started and especially yesterday morning."

"My dear son," said Aslan.

Then he turned and welcomed Edmund. "Well done," were his words.

Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, "Susan." Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. "You have listened to fears, child," said Aslan. "Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?"

"A little, Aslan," said Susan.

"And now!" said Aslan in a much louder voice with just a hint of roar in it, while his tail lashed his flanks. "And now, where is this little Dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer, who doesn't believe in lions? Come here, son of Earth, come HERE!"--and the last word was no longer the hint of a roar but almost the real thing.

"Wraiths and wreckage!" gasped Trumpkin in the ghost of a voice. The children, who knew Aslan well enough to see that he liked the Dwarf very much, were not disturbed; but it was quite another thing for Trumpkin, who had never seen a lion before, let alone this Lion. He did the only sensible thing he could have done; that is, instead of bolting, he tottered towards Aslan.

Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat's mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan's mouth. The Lion gave him one shake and all his armour rattled like a tinker's pack and then--hey-presto--the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother's arms and set him (right way up, too) on the ground.

"Son of Earth, shall we be friends?" asked Aslan.

"Ye--he--he--hes," panted the Dwarf, for it had not yet got its breath back.

Where He Leads

'Do I not say truly, Gandalf,' said Aragorn at last, 'that you could go whithersoever you wished quicker than I? And this I also say: you are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has nine. But we have One, mightier than they; the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.'

--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, p. 490

Tolkien captures here almost exactly what the writer to the Hebrews means by the difficult-to-translate Greek word archegos (pioneer, author, leader), referring to Jesus, in Heb 2:10 and 12:2.

Too Hedonistic

C. S. Lewis, in a 1941 letter to a theology professor at Oxford, alluding to his book The Problem of Pain--

I wasn't writing on the Problem of Pleasure! If I had been you might find my views too hedonistic. I would say that every pleasure (even the lowest) is a likeness to, even, in its restricted mode, a foretaste of, the end for which we exist, the fruition of God. But is it not also, here and now, the road to that fruition for fallen creatures?

--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2 (HarperCollins, 2004), 463; emphasis original

Why Did God Create the World?

For his own glory, oh yes!

And how does he glorify himself?

Jonathan Edwards:

The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse, toward whom he might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of his nature, and to whom he might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love, and grace that was in his heart, and that in this way God might be glorified. 

--Jonathan Edwards, 'The Church's Marriage to Her Sons, and to Her God,' in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 25: Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758 (ed. Wilson Kimnach; Yale University Press, 2006), 187

'All that immense fountain.'