Heavenly Help

"It may please some of my children to find this once I am gone away. He or she may be in some trouble then. Think, darling, how I would help you if I could; how much more your Father and my Father. And He can."George MacDonald (George MacDonald, from a note attached to his manuscript …

The Search

Whither, O, whither art thou fled,My Lord, my Love?My searches are my daily bread;Yet never prove. My knees pierce th’earth, mine eyes the sky;And yet the sphereAnd centre both to me denyThat thou art there. Yet can I mark how herbs belowGrow green and gay,As if to meet thee they did know,While I decay. Yet …

Such Different Kinds

“Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and …

On Trouble, with George MacDonald

“In life troubles will come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of Nature, as that of the human heart, ever …

The Entrance is Low

If Man is finally to know the bodiless, timeless, transcendent Ground of the whole universe not as a mere philosophical abstraction but as the Lord who, despite his transcendence, is “not far from any one of us”, as an utterly concrete Being (far more concrete than we) whom Man can fear, love, address, and “taste”, …

The Glad God So Near

Mary carrying the body of Jesus away because He had been thrown out of the sepulcher and rejected. and He, standing alive beside her, with His heart full of eternal joy. Oh, it is thus with you many a time! Some of you all your life have had pain at your heart, and the glad …

The Glory of Your Being; the Treasure of All Existence

I find in the Gospel the main, central fact of it, that He is constantly trying to rouse the individual man or woman just to do something right. I see it continually almost wherever I look in the Gospel. He is constantly wanting people to wake up and be alive – to do something. The …

On the Meaning of Life, with JRR Tolkien

To Camilla Unwin[Rayner Unwin's daughter Camilla was told, as pan of a school 'project', to write and ask: 'What is the purpose of life?'] 20 May 1969 [19 Lakeside Road, Branksome Park, Poole] Dear Miss Unwin, I am sorry my reply has been delayed. I hope it will reach you in time. What a very …

A Scion

“Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine,A scion of the tree of life: it grows;But not in every wind or weather it blows;The leaves fall sometimes from the baby tree,And the life-power seems melting into pine;Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine,And the unseen root clings cramplike unto thee.” “Do thou, my …

Fair Hope

“My harvest withers. Health, my means to live—All things seem rushing straight into the dark.But the dark still is God. I would not giveThe smallest silver-piece to turn the rushBackward or sideways. Am I not a sparkOf him who is the light?—Fair hope doth flushMy east.—Divine success—Oh, hush and hark!”— George MacDonald, The Diary of …