January 13, They saw Him

I believe that the glory, the majesty, the very presence of God is reflected not only in us, who've been created marvelously in His image, but in all of nature. He can be found when we look for Him. The mountains echo His name. The oceans dance at His presence. The creatures of the earth tell the story of His creativity. Our eyes are windows to heavenly places.

For years, since I first began reading of Irish pre-history I've felt very strongly that God can be found in strength reflected in our history books. Even those who knew nothing of Him personally knew He was there. I've felt this way for a long time, that I can see reflections of the Christian God on pages of books that in no way intend to hint at Him. But I don't hear others talk of this observation much, if at all. Lewis says "we may still most reasonably believe that we have...the God not only of the philosophers, but of mystics and savages, not only of the head and heart, but also of the primitive emotions and the spiritual heights beyond all emotion."

The men in our history books worshiping the gods of water, of the sun, of... you name it, and offering sacrifices to these gods for good growing seasons, for blessing and sometimes for cursing; I see so much truth in their stories, if only a distorted, veiled, missing a very important piece of the puzzle truth. This is one reason history fascinates me so very much. God was always there, always, even when practically no one could see him; and yet they saw him in the mountains, in the oceans, in the creatures; they saw Him.

If He can be known it will be by self-revelation on His part, not by speculation on ours. We, therefore, look for Him where it is claimed that He has revealed Himself by miracle, by inspired teachers, by enjoined ritual. The traditions conflict, yet the longer and more sympathetically we study them the more we become aware of that common element in many of them: the theme of sacrifice, of mystical communion through the shed blood, of death and rebirth, of redemption, is too clear to escape notice. We are fully entitled to use moral and intellectual criticism. What we are not, in my opinion, entitle to do is simply to abstract the ethical element and set that up as a religion on its own. Rather in that tradition which is at once more completely ethical and most transcends mere ethics... we may still most reasonably believe that we have the consummation of all religion, the fullest message from the wholly other, the living creator, who, if He is at all, must be the God not only of the philosophers, but of mystics and savages, not only of the head and heart, but also of the primitive emotions and the spiritual heights beyond all emotion. We may... attach ourselves to the Church, to the only concrete organization which has preserved down to this present time the core of all the messages, pagan and perhaps pre-pagan, that have ever come from beyond the world, and begin to practice the only religion which rests not upon some selection of certain supposedly 'higher' elements in our nature, but on the shattering and rebuilding, the death and rebirth, of that nature in every part: neither Greek nor Jew nor barbarian, but a new creation.
-C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven