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Stephen's Reviews > Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer
Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer
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I read this book because of a reference in Jason Baxter's The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis, where Baxter mentions Lewis's idea of prayer as "unveiling" (Letter IV) to help illuminate the end of Till We Have Faces.
I thought it was funny when, about two-thirds the way through this book, Lewis admits, "I am making very heavy weather of what most believers find a very simple matter" (Letter XV). I had just been thinking the same thing myself after a few of the previous letters, so I had to admire Lewis for the timing of that comment. Also, while there are places where Lewis contemplates matters I had never thought to worry about, I suppose there are others who do worry about them, so I'm glad Lewis addresses them, even if they are not (at least, not at this time) relevant to me.
On the other hand, there are many good ideas here. In Letter IV, Lewis addresses the question of why we pray to God, if God already knows everything? "What, then, are we really doing? . . . We have unveiled. Not that any veil could have baffled His sight. The change is in us. The passive changes to the active. Instead of being merely known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view."
Another excellent point is the focus on gratitude for the physical world and our bodies. Lewis writes, "but for our body one whole realm of God's glory -- all that receive through the senses -- would go unpraised" (Letter III). As he goes on to explain later, in Letter XVII, pleasures can be occasions for praise. They are "shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility." On describing this epiphany that he had, Lewis writes, "I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different . . . . Gratitude exclaims, very properly: 'How good of God to give me this.' Adoration says: 'What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!' One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun" (Letter XVII). There are many more good things like this in Lewis's Letters to Malcolm.
I thought it was funny when, about two-thirds the way through this book, Lewis admits, "I am making very heavy weather of what most believers find a very simple matter" (Letter XV). I had just been thinking the same thing myself after a few of the previous letters, so I had to admire Lewis for the timing of that comment. Also, while there are places where Lewis contemplates matters I had never thought to worry about, I suppose there are others who do worry about them, so I'm glad Lewis addresses them, even if they are not (at least, not at this time) relevant to me.
On the other hand, there are many good ideas here. In Letter IV, Lewis addresses the question of why we pray to God, if God already knows everything? "What, then, are we really doing? . . . We have unveiled. Not that any veil could have baffled His sight. The change is in us. The passive changes to the active. Instead of being merely known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view."
Another excellent point is the focus on gratitude for the physical world and our bodies. Lewis writes, "but for our body one whole realm of God's glory -- all that receive through the senses -- would go unpraised" (Letter III). As he goes on to explain later, in Letter XVII, pleasures can be occasions for praise. They are "shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility." On describing this epiphany that he had, Lewis writes, "I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different . . . . Gratitude exclaims, very properly: 'How good of God to give me this.' Adoration says: 'What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!' One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun" (Letter XVII). There are many more good things like this in Lewis's Letters to Malcolm.
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