The Strange Glory of Ordinary Things

Three of ten resolutions by an American author and English professor named Clyde Kilby (1902-1986). 

"He would have said that Christ purchased new eyes for us as well as new hearts. His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things."

RESOLVED: I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

RESOLVED: I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

RESOLVED: Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.


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Underneath everything in your life there's that...

Louis C.K. appeared on Conan O'Brien a couple nights ago and talked some about why he won't allow his daughters to have smart phones...He totally nailed it.

I appreciate a lot about what he says, not the least of which is his understanding of the necessity to just STOP - just stop. And think about life. He appears to be an atheist, and he holds that view very consistently, something many atheists don't do. I like that.

What I mean is that C.K. understands that, as he puts it, "underneath everything in your life there's that thing - that empty...forever empty. . . That knowledge that it's all for nothing and you're alone." When he says it, it's oddly hilarious, because it's something true that we can all relate to.

It's all for nothing and you're alone.

A consistent atheist must come to that conclusion. And that conclusion is bleak, hopeless, and depressing. But that's why I like C.K. and why I appreciate this video. He really gets that part of it. He even diagnoses our desires for constant entertainment, pornography, and gratuitous food consumption as mechanisms for us to escape the tragic reality we face without God.

I also like this video because it gives me a platform to talk about Christianity not as a religious impracticality, meant only for the moral or gullible, but as the answer to very real and practical questions about life. Faith in Christ's heaven as our future hope is the only way to erase the sadness talked about here in a deeply enduring way. All of our other coping mechanisms, including C.K.'s own as described in the video, are shallow and  temporary physiological fixes. They always leave us wanting.

So I agree with Louis C.K. here. Meet the sadness. "Let it hit you like a truck." But don't then make the mistake of constantly injecting your psyche with some figurative morphine to dull the pain. Pain is protection. And this sadness is like that. It's an alarm bell ringing in your soul. It's telling you that something is wrong. You need treatment to take away the pain at it's source. Otherwise you will go through life "kind of satisfied with your products, then you die." Alone.

If we die in our original state, we really will be alone, in outer darkness pounding on a door that no one will ever answer. But - if we believe the good news about Christ - we are united with Him and will not be alone. We will be with Him and all the other sinners he saved by his grace through his blood - forever.

Thanks for reading.