Channels of Adoration

The gift of water, air, children, a spouse.  Health, walking, holding a baby, etc etc.  They are channels of adoration.

Clive Staples Lewis: “Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility. . . . But aren’t

there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them

“bad pleasures” I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean

“pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.” It is the stealing of the apples

that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the

glory. . . . I have tried since . . . 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 meant 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. . . . If this is Hedonism, it is also a

somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.”