Comfort in Insignificance

"Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He lays no merit on you...Be comforted, small immortals. You are not the voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come." C.S. Lewis from Perelandra

I finished this book today and towards the end, I found those two passages. At first, I confess, pride reared its ugly head. I get to rejoice that I'm insignificant? But then, I thought on it more. Yes, I do!

At the core of our sin nature, there is our pride and arogance that desires to be like God. It is the temptation that Eve was given in the garden and just like our first parents, we are ever listening to its lie yet again. Selfishness, anger, even worry, they are all tenacles of the same massive pride. We want to be our own God.

But do we really? Do we really understand what being God is? Yes, He gets all the glory and worship but He has endured pain that we cannot even fathom! And, besides that point, how comfortable would you be if your loved one's lives were in your hands? If you alone were responsible to ensure that your father made it home safe from work every day, your mother stayed strong as she served her family, or your children lived through the raging fever of the flu? Wouldn't you kinda, you know, go insane with the pressure?

That is why I think C.S. Lewis' character told the human to rejoice in his smallness. God does not require us to do His job. The world will not crumble because we goofed; our salvation will not be in jeapordy because we didn't see something coming. He does not lay any merit on us...He knows we are sinners and He sees us as we are, expecting neither more nor less. He understands us, for He became like us.

Rejoice! God is mighty enough to be God by Himself! He doesn't not need us!