There Is Hope for Everyone

There once was a boy who dearly loved his mother.

His mother was diagnosed with a terrible disease when he was ten years old.

The boy prayed to God for his mother to be healed.

She was not.

The boy's mother died and as a result he blamed God for her death.

That blame then grew into a genuine disbelief in God.

By age thirteen he became quite "worldly" and declared that he was no longer a Christian.

In the plainest of terms, he had given up on God..

By age fifteen, he began to hate the school he was enrolled in and begged his father to take him out of it.

Although he had an aptitude for literature his lack of ability in mathematics caused him to fail in school.

When war broke out, he was recruited into the army and found himself on the front lines on his nineteenth birthday.

After the war, he returned to school and resumed his education.

At age thirty-one, he fell on his knees and confessed that "God is God' and became a theist.

Although he believed in God, he still did not believe that Jesus was who He claimed to be.

Two years later, at age thirty-three he went on a thirty mile motorcycle trip to the zoo with his brother.

He later said that when the trip began, he still did not acknowledge that Jesus was the Son of God.

By the time they arrived, he did.

The man about whom I write is C. S. Lewis.

He was known as one of the most famous defenders of Christianity in the twentieth century.

As a boy, Lewis had given up on God.

God never gave up on Lewis.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Lewis composed a large body of work which not only defended the Christian faith but explained with complete and flawless logic why it is the only faith that makes  sense.

In recent years his Chronicles of Narnia series have been made into full length motion pictures.

Among his works was a series of radio lectures which he broadcast on BBC Radio during World War II.

These were eventually compiled into one book entitled Mere Christianity.

We are now studying that book in the adult Sunday school class I am privileged to teach.

Lewis died on November 22, 1963.

That was the same day President John Kennedy was assassinated.

News of the assassination greatly diminished the newsworthiness of the passing of C. S. Lewis.

Considering the life of C. S. Lewis leads me to remember another life that was changed permanently.

Paul, who penned the letters that make up such a large part of our New Testament, found his life forever changed.

Be it a road to Damascus or a road that leads to an English zoo, lives can be completely changed at the time of God's choosing.

For as long as we draw breath, there remains hope for meaningful and eternal change.

That means that there is hope for everyone.


Blessings,
Jim Pokorny
The  Other Brother Jim
Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, April 18, 2014.
I’ll be back here on Friday, April 25, 2014