Find the Glory of God in the Simplest of Pleasures

Lewis on "patches of Godlight"

In a cultural moment in which we have sum of the world in our pockets, I am convinced it has never been so difficult or important to find glimpses of God’s glory in our backyards, living rooms, or the like.

C. S. Lewis writes in Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer:

Gratitude exclaims, very properly: ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says: ‘What must be the quality of Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.

If I could always be what I aim at being, no pleasure would be too ordinary or too usual for such reception; from the first taste of the air when I look out of the window—one’s whole cheek becomes a sort of palate—down to one’s soft slippers at bed-time.

….

One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We—or at least I—shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest…Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.

As I have gotten older, I have become much less interested in wringing my hands about global matters of supposed importance outside of my control and much more interested in seeing how God may be whispering and working in the closer things underneath the clamor and chaos of the distant things.

Often this results in my mind running “back up the sunbeam to the sun” and considering the glory of God in chittering hummingbirds or evening snuggles with my girls.

May God graciously draw our eyes to ways he gives us small pleasures, and may he help us hold loosely the concerns we have about “important things” outside of our control.