C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 13

On silence [The demon Screwtape writes:] Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 12

Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have heard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion. And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 11

In the earliest days of Christianity an ‘apostle’ was first and foremost a man who claimed to be an eyewitness of the Resurrection. Only a few days after the Crucifixion when two candidates were nominated for the vacancy created by the treachery of Judas, their qualification was that they had known Jesus personally both before …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 10

After that talk with the Lady things got worse in two different ways. In the first place the country was much harder. The road led through endless, narrow valleys down which a cruel north wind was always blowing in their faces. There was nothing that could be used for firewood, and there were no nice …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 9

Screwtape offers a helpful image: Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 8

Our nature is no purer for the saint That worships, nor from him that uses ill Our beauty can we suffer any taint. As from the first we were, so are we still: With incorruptibles the mortal will Corrupt itself, and clouded eyes will make Darkness within from beams they cannot take. From Narrative Poems

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 7

When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, [Uncle Andrew] had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 6

On Freedom (and predestination) Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. From The Great Divorce Compiled in Words to Live By

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 5

When we are praying about the result, say, of a battle or a medical consultation the thought will often cross our minds that (if only we knew it) the event is already decided one way or the other. I believe this to be no good reason for ceasing our prayers. The event certainly has been …

C. S. LEWIS DAILY: DECEMBER 4

When the third day dawned—with a brightness you or I could not bear even if we had dark glasses on— they saw a wonder ahead. It was as if a wall stood up between them and the sky, a greenish-grey, trembling, shimmering wall. Then up came the sun, and at its first rising they saw …