We Should Not Be Frustrated By Mysteries; We ...

We should not be frustrated by mysteries; we should delight in them. We don’t have to figure everything out. In an essay titled “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C. S. Lewis describes an experience he had inside a dark toolshed. The sun was brilliantly shining outside, but inside the shed only a small sunbeam could be seen through a crack at the top of the door. As he looked at the beam of light, he could see flecks of dust and dirt floating about. Lewis said: “I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving in the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.” Looking at the beam made everything else darker by comparison, but when he moved into the light and looked along it, out the crack above the door, he saw leaves and blue sky, and beyond that the blinding sun itself. He no longer saw the beam because he was in it. Looking at the beam of light he saw one thing. Looking with it he saw something else. Looking at the beam made things look darker. But looking with the beam, the object of his vision became blinding — not because of the absence of light, but because of the intense presence of it. Faith is not scientifically studying the beam of light, it is stepping into it.