OC Bereans

Fifty years ago, November 22, 1963 will always be remembered as the day President John F. Kennedy died, as it should be.  In fact, I can remember exactly where I was standing when I first heard the news …

… front lawn of Lockhaven Christian School on 104^th St. in Inglewood, California …

… getting ready to board a big yellow school bus for a field trip to the California Museum of Science & Industry (just north of the L.A. Coliseum) …

… my 6^th grade teacher, Bruce Murray, gathering us around to break the unheard of news of the President’s assassination …

… a word that this 11-year-old had never heard, and could not spell …

But it was also the day the world lost two literary powerhouses, but news of their deaths were virtually lost in the coverage of JFK’s assassination:

… Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World.

… C.S. Lewis, the greatest Christian thinker of the 20^th Century, and prolific author of 60+ books, including The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia, plus innumerable articles.

If you’ve never read anything by Lewis, then you must!  A complete list of all his works can be found here at the C.S. Lewis website.

In addition, you can download a free e-Book, C.S. Lewis – A Profile in Faith, from the C.S. Lewis Institute.

As a tribute to this Christian literary giant, here is one of many favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

Shalom!

~ tr