George MacDonald - Ponderings

When I was a boy my mother read George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin to me; it imprinted an image of “otherness” within me, giving me a sense of a world and dimension beyond my own little neighborhood and unpredictable family. That sense was likely the first tug on the rope of Divine grace and drawing. While we sporadically attended church, other than the occasional sense of God looking like Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., my impressions were more apt to be that of formality and propriety. If the statue of Lincoln was lifeless, so sadly my time at church was pretty much lifeless - other than, of course, the girls in Sunday school. I probably had more of a sense of the sacred in the library in Kensington, MD than I did in Kensington's Warner Memorial Presbyterian Church.

C.S. Lewis termed MacDonald “my master”. Writing of MacDonald Lewis says, “The Divine Sonship is the key-conception which unites all the different elements of his thought. I dare not say he is never in error, but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.”

Lewis’s quote about MacDonald reminds me of Andrew Murray’s thinking about William Law when Murray published some of Law’s writing; Murray said in effect (I’m too lazy to look up the exact quote), “I know Law isn’t perfect, but I can’t find the quality of life and grace he transmits to others anywhere else.”

Here are some quotes from MacDonald and my ponderings on them:

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it. MacDonald.

God really does want the best for us, after all He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, to bear our sins, to suffer for us, to rise for us, and to come and knock at the door of our lives - asking us to let Him inside. The best for us is Jesus, it is an intimate relationship with our heavenly Father. We think the best is hitting the lottery. We think the best consists in “things”, in money, in recognition, in fame, in pleasure. God would not love us if He allowed us to settle for lesser things and experiences; He desires to prepare us for eternity. Now the question is whether we will allow God to prepare us to spend forever with Him or we will insist on preparing ourselves for eternity without Him.

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud. MacDonald.

Pascal thought that the chief benefit of the rich was that they could pay for entertainment and therefore avoid thinking deeply about life and its meaning. In our age of television and other media, entertainment is now for the masses, and as Neil Postman wrote, we are “amusing ourselves to death.” We are a society that is dying from entertainment; whether sports or video games or music or movies or television or any number of other diversions, we are killing our hearts and minds and souls. We don’t need to go to the Colosseum for the Colosseum now comes to us. Even many churches are now more concerned about entertaining their attendees than tending to their souls. We have become used to the mud, we like it.

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk. MacDonald.

Some of us get old and die, others get old and live. It is never too late to start living, never too late to dig deep into God and to allow God to dig deep into you. When I was a child and we were taking a trip, like most kids I asked, “Are we there yet?” We can have that same sense of expectation as we advance in years, the same excitement when we are in a relationship with Jesus Christ, the One who conquered death and desires to give us new life in Himself. (See 2 Corinthians 5:1 - 10).

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset. MacDonald.

Of course we seldom talk about death; we must think that if we don’t talk about it that it won’t happen, just like the child who thinks that if he covers his face with his hands and can’t see you, that you can’t see him. We talk about long-term health care but we don’t talk about what happens when we die and don’t need the health care. We may talk about burial versus cremation, but we don’t talk about what happens when we leave this body. If nothing happens, if death is the end - then why aren’t we planning going away parties? Why aren’t we living as if nothing really matters? (Yes, some of us do live that way, but thankfully most of us still don’t...not yet anyway).

God's thoughts, his will, his love, his judgments are all man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will, to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in us, is to be at home. MacDonald

Of course the sad thing is that when we are born, we are not born “at home.” We are born alienated from God (though there is a mystery with babies and young children that I don’t understand - other than that they are in the Father’s care). Jesus wants us to come home, just as the father of the Prodigal Son yearned for him to come home (Luke Chapter 15). Jesus’ words on the night of His betrayal  (John chapters 13 - 17) are about coming home - about us coming home to God and God coming home to us, within us. We are called to intimacy with the Divine, with the True and Living God. The Father desires to teach his sons and daughters His ways; to teach us His thoughts, His love. When we come to God in Christ we are made His friends. Abraham was called the friend of God. Jesus says to those who know Him that they are His friends (John Chapter 15). God calls us home, God calls us to friendship. Not too bad a thing, to wake up each morning with God as our friend.