Uncategorized – Treasures of Darkness

In the 1960s The Byrds had a Top Hit with their song Turn, Turn, Turn– based on this verse from The Bible: ‘There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven.’ Ecclesiastes 3:1 – you can hear it here.

If you have read Narnia (and I hope you have) you would have noticed that all the stories have a different sense of time. For example, in the Lion Witch the Wardrobe, CS Lewis sends the children to Narnia where they stayed for 15 to20 years – long enough to grow into adult kings and queens – but then when they return to their original lives no time has elapsed at all.

I’ve been thinking about this recently: dwelling on the fact that when God created the Earth and mankind, he also created Time. It is quite difficult to imagine a point at which time did not exist, but before God created it there wasn’t Time! and if you travel to Narnia time is different!

So, like everything that is created, Time is a gift from God – it’s a gift, I would suggest, to be used not only for enjoyment but also for growth, repentance, to learn about Him and His love. We have been given Time to discover: to use the experience of our lives to grow into the people that God wants, designed us to be.

There is a fine recording of CS Lewis (in person) on YouTube entitled: The Problem with Being Good!

It can be found here and below are some extracts from the talk:

The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self. And that this process goes on very far inside. One’s most private wishes, one’s point of view are the things that have to be changed. That’s why unbelievers’ complaint with Christianity is that it is a selfish religion. “Isn’t it very selfish—even morbid—” they say, “to be always bothering about the inside of your own soul, instead of thinking of humanity?” ……

A crab apple tree can’t produce eating apples. As long as the old self is there, its taint will be over all we do. We try to be religious and become pharisees. We try to be kind and become patronizing. Social service ends in red tape and officialdom. Unselfishness becomes a form of showing off. I don’t mean, of course, that we should stop trying to be good; we’ve got to do the best we can…..

Out of ourselves and into Christ we must go. The change won’t, for most of us, happen suddenly. And I must admit that for most Christians it’ll only be beginning at the very end of our present lives….

Why have we chosen this name? To many people the idea of darkness implies the darkness of evil. But in fact, where this phrase comes from – the book of Isaiah in the Bible – darkness can mean a great deal more than just darkness and evil.

In fact, for many centuries in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, darkness very often implied hiddenness – even the Lord God is said to be hidden – Psalm 18:11 says: He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him – the dark rain clouds of the sky.

So, we are trying to convey the idea that we want to search out the things that are hidden, within our lives or within our culture, that influence us without us even knowing.

Once we can see into the darkness, we see the ‘treasures’ that can help us to grow, help us to kick off bad habits: to become more the people that we want to become.

Category: Uncategorized

For every season…

CS Lewis on Being Good

Why Treasures of Darkness?