10/30/2022 – Chapter Nine Discussion: “Why Surrender Does Not Squash Individuality.”
I feel compelled to share the C.S. Lewis quote after a De Caussade introduction, pg. #51:
“Far from ignoring, downplaying, or threatening our unique individuality, God’s providence deliberately designs for it. For, as de Caussade says, ‘God… manifests his will so differently to each of us’ (pg 78).”
And C.S. Lewis says:
“If he had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you… [In Revelation 2:17, God says:] ‘To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a name written, which no man knoweth saving that receiveth it.’ What can be a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created? … For doubtless the continually successful, yet never complete, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others ( and that by means whereof earthly art and philosophy are but clumsy imitations) is also among the ends for which the individual was created.” C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (San Francisco: HarperCollins 2001), 151, 154-155.
Unfathomably sublime indeed; Soli Deo Gloria!