HOPE

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My passion for inspiring others to have HOPE and helping them OVERCOME adversity has impacted many lives already. The largest impact has been to my own life. It’s inspired me to do things I never before even dreamed of or thought possible. It’s inspired me to form an organization, EyeNeedHope.com. It’s inspired me to read books that I never would have read before. Okay, I never read many books before.

One of these latest books is “Mere Christianity”, by C.S. Lewis. Up until now, I knew him for his movies. 🙂 I know, he didn’t create the movies, but he did write the stories.

In this book, he wrote a chapter entitled “Hope.” Over the next few post, I intend to share the chapter with you. Here’s the first paragraph or so.

“Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more— food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.”

Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 134-135). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

If you enjoy reading and even if you don’t, I highly recommend “Mere Christianity.” It’s even better than “The Chronicles of Narnia” or “The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.” 🙂

Excerpt taken from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, published by Harper Collins, available here via Amazon. More info www.amazon.com