The Dull Bits

Send forth your strength, O God; establish, O God, what you have wrought for us.  Psalm 68:28 

I think that this is becoming one of my favorite verses. 

So much more purposeful and intentional- make-you-want-to-get-up-in-the-morning sort of idea.  Rather than the counterpoint: O LORD, what are we that you should care for us? mere mortals that you should think of us? We are like a puff of wind; our days are like a passing shadow.

Back to Lewis.  Perlandia is sitting next to me on the dining room table, ready to be packed in my bag for Las Vegas.  I picture him, this prematurely hunched-over professor of medieval and Renaissance Literature, taking long meandering countryside walks and puffing on his pipe with a few pals in some leather-infested library.    It is difficult to imagine a less “relevant” way to invest one’s life.  Besides squishing into a no-empty-seats Southwest flight to give the opening speech at a Geography Bee in a dinky little Assembly of God school on the outskirts of Las Vegas, I mean.  Or dragging generations of squirmy sixth graders into memorizing 54 prepositions, I mean.  Butcha know, ol’ Lewis has brought joy and delight and meaning and light to millions of people.  Wrapping words around the unseen God so that we could get glimpses of His glory.  Just doing what was set before him.  Who he was created to be from the beginning of time.  Following his passions.  Persevering through the dull bits.  Spending years caring for the irritable and sickly mother of a dead wartime friend. 

Establish, O God, what You have wrought for me today.  Even if it is simply being gracious to the irritable and sickly woman spilling over the armrest in the airplane.  Your grace.  I will remember Mr. Marco today, whose specialty is serving grace to the person next to him on public transportation.  Send forth Your strength.