The Sunrise and CS Lewis

I believe in God like I believe in the sunrise. Not because I can see it but because by it I can see everything else.

-CS Lewis.

Some of my favorite memories of my childhood are of when my father would read out loud to me. One summer he read me the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A literary staple to every childhood. I enjoyed its whimsy and intrigue and all the delights and the perils of the Pevensie children. It was such fun. I would lie in my parents’ great big bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets and the voice of my father would carry off into the mystical land of Narnia and beyond to take part in adventure and uncertainty.

I have stood by the Chronicles of Narnia ever since. The memories still linger and though the series always remained a set of books that I would recommend to every child in town, my connection with the author was lost. But there is a moment in every dwindling friendship that has the power of re-awaking it and that moment was brought on by this quote. It sort of rocked my world, actually. And even though that was years ago I can feel the impact of this statement in my heart even now.

You see, for years I struggled with what to do with my belief in God. I couldn’t shake it; sure I tossed it around a lot and in sat in various places in the bedroom of my heart. Not much unlike that piece of paper with the phone number of an old friend that you are going call once you have the time. You don’t want to file it away in case you forget where you filed it and you don’t want to throw it away knowing that if you do you will forget for eternity and never call. And so my belief was something that I came across again and again. Sometimes I found it under my bed; sometimes it was on my chair. This awkward thing that just sort of stuck around. When it was useful it was very useful and when it wasn’t I would usually just end up tripping over it on my way to something else.

This quote began to put this whole “faith” thing into perspective for me. It challenged me to not just stare at it and occasionally try it on just for good measure, it challenged me to pick it up and look through it. It challenged me to put it to use. It is possible to believe in God like you believe in the sunrise, and that is a very romantic notion. One that I am rather inclined to like, but at the same time, sunrises can be fickle. On the northern pole of this planet the sun sometimes doesn’t rise, and depending on the season you are either woken up by its rays or left waiting staring out your window for a glimmer of hope that perhaps summer hasn’t left after all. But, if you count on its light and the direction that it gives then there is a constancy.

Regardless of whether you see the sunrise you can still make out objects by the light that it sheds. Some days are brilliant with the light of the sun; others tend to leave you squinting and estimating where things are and where you will end up. When we believe that through the eyes of faith we can see everything that is around us and actually put that faith to the test then we can understand what it is to believe in something more than just the fickleness of a sunrise.

The book of Job reminds of this more than anything. Job had it all, a wife, kids, and wealth and in one fell swoop Satan took it all away. But God, for some reason allowed him. Job was left with nothing more than the ruins of a life he once knew and some pretty attractive boils. But despite his wife’s pleas to curse God and despite his friends’ poor advice, he looked beyond the sunrise mentality and hung in there. He could see, at least for a while, what God was doing because he was looking at his life through the light cast by the sunrise. He wasn’t face first to the horizon waiting for that amber globe to rise and hover above it, he was probably standing with his back to the horizon waiting for the rays to continually light the tragedy of his life from an eternal perspective. When that failed God brought Him Elihu to remind him how to use the light and see properly.

When we are forced to look at things from the perspective of eternity the shapes shift. Job realized that in this heavenly hue the tragedies afforded to him could serve a bigger purpose than just himself. They could serve to glorify his God, the God that he had lost everything for in the first place. They could serve to teach him about the Almighty and His vastness and when you lose the eternal perspective on your life things get a little dim and all that begins to come into focus is what lies around you and how those objects make you feel. Without the light of the sunrise we forget that we are dearly loved servants of the Most High and that we have two purposes on this earth; to be loved by and to glorify God.

As I learned (and am still learning) to see the light of the sunrise and understand that it illuminates that which is important from an eternal perspective I noticed (and am noticing) how life slowly began (and begins) to come back together. It was no longer about that which caused me pain or discomfort but it became about that which brings glory to my Creator and how I can ease the pain and discomfort of others. When you go about your life not waiting on the sunrise, but knowing how to see from the light that it brings things get simpler. There is no longer this anxious worry about whether the sun will rise or not. There is no getting up early and impatiently waiting at the windowsill. There is simply this calm of knowing that when the sun does rise and the light fills the room, your life is embraced by eternity and all of the questions and doubts are either erased or satisfied. You can live life, not because the sun has risen, but because it has served its purpose and has lit your way.

Admittedly, I would rather some days worry about the sunrise than the life that it is about illuminate, but that is why we have Job 38. A series of beautiful yet terrifying questions about how the world works and how we control it. They are enough to remind me that when I begin to boss God around I better know what I am doing, because He has seen it all and has traced the universe with His own hand.

I used to wonder what to do with my belief in God, now I know that instead of just tripping over it it must be used and exercised or there really is no point in having it. Like Lucy’s elixir, there is no point in possessing something so valuable if it will simply go to waste.