Compounding glory
Last night, our home group discussed Paul’s admonition to “redeem the time” (a more literal rendering of Ephesians 5:16). We talked about how the little choices we make add up to eternal destinies; not in the karmic sense of being weighed for our actions, but in the sense that the person we are is constantly expressed in who we’re becoming by our choices.
That led me to a chain of quotes from C. S. Lewis, that are from different works but string together beautifully:
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible. – from Mere Christianity
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Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God "sending us" to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud. – from The Great Divorce
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It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. … There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. – from “The Weight of Glory”
The gospel means that in a sense we are liberated from the consequences of our choices: like the thief on the cross who could only beseech Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and was told, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42-43), the gospel buries all notions of karma under the heavenly Temple of grace.
But as Lewis notes, the reality of life means that who we are – people of the gospel, or not – is always expressed in actions, and those actions compound toward a life of increasing glory or increasing shame. Jesus’ sobering warnings about faithless stewards and squandered inheritances warn us away from flippancy; we do well to consider what grows in the gardens of our hearts.
But there is a positive side to that as well: glory compounds. Our small acts of love and repentance, our paltry victories in self-control, combine and grow to shape not just our soul into eternity but the souls of others as well, in ways we might never see into eternity. Your kindness to the gym attendant might shape her toward divinity. Your refusal to click that link might lead to a child or mentee being blessed by your greater joy. A mosaic is made by pressing one piece of glass or stone into cement at a time.