Lewis and Milton

This is what keeps coming into my head as I prepare to embark (please excuse the awful pun) on a paper I feel completely inadequate to write. The Screwtape Letters and Paradise Lost...I'm not sure even where to begin. Both are such powerhouses.

Reading Screwtape again was great for me spiritually. Lewis puts his finger on so many things that seem to have been written just for me. This time his letter on prayer hit extra close to home. And then, there's always the comforting letter about the Law of Undulation--how every aspect of our lives naturally go through cycles of peaks and troughs, and how God often uses the troughs for our good much more than the peaks. That in those times we feel farthest from God and spiritually dry are the times when our acts of obedience mean the most to him. In Screwtape's words: "Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he is forsaken, and still obeys." Inspiring, it is. But I'm no closer to writing my paper.

For all of those who haven't read The Screwtape Letters, you should pick up a copy. It can be a quick read, and it can be very beneficial. At any rate, it gets The Matt Tingle Stamp of Approval. And with that, I will start trying to piece together 5 or 6 pages of coherent writing with a silent, heart-felt apology to both Lewis and Milton somewhere along the way, for my butchery of their craftmanship. Until my next post, I leave you,

Your affectionate brother,

Matt