Monday, March 03, 2008

Other Authors -- The Apologiist's Evening Prayer

A conversation yesterday about the dangers of making our own theology into an idol, reminded me of this poem. I think Lewis nails it: after all the danger of idolatry is not so much that our image of God is wrong in itself (it may be quite biblical as far as it goes) but that we think that this particular aspect is all there is to Him. Now, though we see truly when we see God revealed in Jesus, yet we see in part, through a glass darkly, for we do not yet fully know...

THE APOLOGIST'S EVENING PRAYER
From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seem to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity
Thou, who wouldst give no other sign, deliver me

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all me thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee
O thou Fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,
Take me from all my trumpery lest I die.

-- C S Lewis

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