MUD PIES

”Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.  We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis)

We quickly repudiate crawling on ground glass, self-flagellation and all other forms of penitence as unscriptural, while imposing an attenuated version on ourselves, equating boring pleasure less lives with godliness. “All I need is stale bread, potable water and God, gosh darn it, and I’m happy.” Mud pies! Others of us become adept at removing the scriptural obstacles to spending desire in the world much like a saintly Edward Sissorhands, snipping out any restraining passages: “Oh, I don’t think you have to “Blank” to be a Christian”, missing the truthfulness of their first four words. Desires, in and of themselves are not wrong; the basic desires of the human heart are God given, and pleasure, the fruit of desire fulfilled, is not necessarily sinful. At issue is not that we have desires, but in what sandbox we choose to live them out.

We don’t have to suffocate our natural desires to please God, and we don’t have to ignore God’s precepts and commands to please ourselves. God, the great architect, made provision for the fulfillment of all our natural desires within the boundaries of His sandbox so the pleasure-fruit of our spent desires does not rot with guilt and empty regret. If we have patience, God’s favorite sculpturing tool, God will fulfill all our desires in His time and His way; could anything possibly be better? If we let life become a choice between enjoyment and serving God we have really missed the point, and love making mud pies.

The Christian life is all about choices. Rather than deny our need to satisfy our natural desires we need to find their fulfillment in God’s sandbox, submitted to His will as He “works in us both to will and to do for his good pleasure”, which includes satisfying the desires He put into us. And we need to keep focused on the real prize in this life, the blessed hope we are called too which can only be found in Him. Mud pies may be tangible reality, but they are still just mud! God doesn’t describe His unblushing promises in man’s superlatives, He goes way over the top and states unequivocally our language is inadequate to describe, and our mind incapable of comprehending the “good things” He has prepared for them who love Him. Can I get a “WOW” right here? Faith is the title deed to hope and the evidence of hope: Is faith even possible without hope? Choosing a holiday at the seashore over making mud pies is a choice based in hope. Faith springs from hope, and pleases God.