The Face of Love

I started my week with a Devotional and this Quiet Scripture reading, little guessing how similar these words would echo the final chapters for our study at Michele Morin's site:

Living Our Days

for C.S. Lewis' myth retold, Till We Have Faces. 

"This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NIV

We have come to the final two chapters of the book, and I find myself overwhelmed with so many thoughts from these words penned by a supreme wordsmith.  But C.S. Lewis was not using his words only for the sake of beautiful and cunning language. No, he addresses that thought, the ultimate inadequacies of our language, as he alludes to the meaning of this book's title:

"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. . . Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they (the gods) hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

In the last days of her life, Orual was given vision after vision, taking her closer to the depths of her own heart. In one final vision, Orual brought her (mostly) finished story and her complaint against the gods.  As she stood reading her complaint, she suddenly realized that she had been reading the same words over and over again, and the gods themselves had been silent.  

There in the silence she understood that the very complaint she had brought before them, thinking she was judging them, was in fact, the judgement of her own ways. She was the one who had treated LOVE unfairly. She was the one who had abused the heart of her Dear Psyche, and the one who had sent her away.

In the moments before Orual faced her trial before the Supreme Lord, she was shown glimpses of her life, and of Psyche's life. As she watched their parallel paths, she saw the heart difference displayed in Psyche. While Psyche still carried joy through her wanderings, Orual had only carried sorrow and bitterness in the deep caverns of her soul.  A clarity began to form in Orual's heart.

Haven't I faced that moment of clarity  when the True God placed before me the decision to choose HIS Life,

to be offered a full repentance?

Psyche offered to Orual, a love that was without restraint. A love that Orual had never been able to attain:

"Did I not tell you, Maia (Psyche's name for Orual,) that a day was coming when you and I would meet in my house and no cloud between us?"

Psyche brought Orual to the edge of a pool, and the joy and the love that Orual had never understood before, was offered to her through Psyche's gift. Even as the Supreme One approached them, and Orual felt herself "pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade," she knew why all of it mattered:

"The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for His sake. And He was coming. The most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming."

And in that moment, the unmaking of Orual was the birthing of something more beautiful than she could ever have thought. In the reflected vision at the pool, Psyche's love and Psyche's beauty became her own. Same but not the same. Mercy had won over judgement. Only Love remained. 

Her book demanded a different ending:

"I ended my first book with the words 'no answer.' I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"

And my own heart wept as another glimpse into the mercy of my God filled my soul. All of my own striving to love, all of my own searching for beauty only leads me to a deeper shame, and a deeper knowing that I cannot attain to what is required. He, the ONE who is everything, is not within my reach.

But His Mercy made a way

His Mercy sent Jesus

His Son

To show me what 

only He could bring:

The True Love

that paid the price

for the complaint

brought against me,

and you.

In His Face 

we find our own faces

when we choose His Life

His Love

The God who spoke light into existence, saying, “Let light shine from the darkness,” is the very One who sets our hearts ablaze to shed light on the knowledge of God’s glory revealed in the face of Jesus, the Anointed One.

2 Corinthians 4:6 (The Voice)

He takes the same Love that's inside of His Heart

And He puts the same love deep inside of me.



To find an index for all of the posts in this series on the study of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces,
click here

I am linking today with:
Debbie Kitterman, #TuneInThursday

Suzie Eller, #LiveFreeThursday

Die Before You Die

Today marks the 100th post I've written for this blog! Wow, I feel like I should be celebrating. When I obeyed the prompting of Jesus to write out my thoughts on living this Journey with Rheumatoid Arthritis, I little knew the adventures He had planned for me.  Opening my heart to post the trials and the joys along the way has led me to jewels that I never would have gathered had I chosen to ignore those promptings. 

I wish that I could have tea and cake (gluten and dairy free, of course) with each of you that I have met along the way! This online community that I have entered into, with both old and new friends, has brought to me an awakening of how truly we are all deeply joined together.  And one of those communities is over at Michele Morin's site: 

Living Our Days

where she has been leading a wonderful book study on C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. After today, there will only be one more unit, and then we are finished.  

My Mother always told me that if I wasn't careful, I would lose myself in the books that I read.  I can still hear her voice telling me to "put that book down, and get to work!"  (But she was just as apt to lose herself in a good book too!)  This book study has proven to be one of those instances, only loosing myself has been a good thing this time around.



As Orual approached her own life's ending, and after her encounter at the strange temple, she began the writing down of her story.  But what she found along the way was that her own memories had deceived her.  She began to find an uglier face to her soul than even her physical face had borne.  When her trusted counselor, Bardia, died, and she faced the love that she had for him, she ventured to Bardia's widow to bring her a measure of comfort. But the revealing that was uncovered there was a process that began the unveiling that Orual had long tried to avoid.  Bardia's widow accused Orual of being the cause for his death, 

"I know, that your queenship drank up his blood year by year and ate out his life. . . You're full fed. Gorged with other men's lives, and women's too: Bardia's, mine, the Fox's your sister's--both your sisters'."

As the awful truth began to settle in, she realized that what she had called love, had actually been selfishness, control, and manipulation. The temple ceremonies brought a fresh wounding, as Orual saw that the god, Ungit, vainly worshipped by her people, and long despised by herself, could not compare with the sickness that she saw in her own heart. Finally, in a dream, Orual looked in a mirror and saw not just an ugly image, but a deeper revealing of her heart:

"It was I who was Ungit. That ruinous face was mine. Glome was a web--I the swollen spider, squat at its center, gorged with men's stolen lives."

And here, the story merges with my own looking. Any of us who have given our lives to Christ, will recognize the breaking that happens when we face the awful state of our own sinfulness.  If we let the veil come down, and look at ourselves truthfully, we can say like the Apostle Paul:

"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?"

Romans 7:24 NIV


When  the awful state of our hearts is first revealed, if we will listen, we can recognize a Presence there with us in the asking of that question. Our Savior stands beside us with an option.

And it was the same for Orual. In her despair, the only way open that she could see to redeem for her awful deeds was to kill herself, and thus to put an end to the horrible ways.  But just as she was about to enter the river, she heard a voice that she recognized too well, the same voice she had heard with Psyche:

"Do not do it. You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also. Die before you die. There is no chance after."

I will not know the choice that Orual made until I read the final chapters. But I know the choice that I made so many years ago, when first I heard my Savior's call.  Only in choosing to lay down my rights to myself, and to accept His offering, His own death on the cross, would I find redemption for the awful heart in me.  

His Love purchased my freedom

                 His Love brought me back from the brink

                            And His Love bid me die to sin

                                        that I might live with Him.

"For you died,
and your life is now
hidden
with Christ in God."
Colossians 3:3










And in this newness of Life 
where I walk with Jesus,
He uncovers yet new depths
New places in my heart
where He asks me still

Die before you die
There is no chance after.


This journey of walking with Chronic Illness?
How does it fit in with the life of freedom
that I have been promised?

How could something 
that brings MORE pain
lead me to healing?

It is in this very suffering,
this daily dying to my own will,
that I find a precious intimacy
in learning HIS new way of living.


Are you suffering?

Is there an awfulness in your soul?

Jesus stands beside you, my friend,

And bids you follow Him

to die before you die,

and find a LIVING

you never could have dreamed.



In case you missed any posts in this Book Study series, and would like to catch up, an index can be found by 
clicking here


Today I am linking over at 
Literacy Musings Monday #LMMLinkup

Suzie Eller, #LiveFreeThursday