The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men

[soso]

Today's Reading

Sometime in the spring (Trinity Sunday was May 22 that year, 1929) Lewis came to believe in God, though not yet in Christ:

You must picture me /alone /in that room /in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted /even for a second /from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him //of whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.

[That which I greatly feared] had at last come upon me.

In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed:

perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

* deject; sad and depressed; dispirited.

I did not then see [what is now the most shining and obvious thing;

the Divine humility //which will accept a convert /even on such terms.

The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet.

But who can duly adore that Love //which will open the high gates to a prodigal //who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful,

and darting his eyes in every direction /for a chance of escape?

The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them;

but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy.

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (Surprised by Joy, Chapter 14)

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume I
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume I: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.