Just a couple of thoughts from Book III, now that I'm back to my reading...
From chapter 5:
"After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying agin. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."
I like this idea that getting up from our failures and trying again is all part of the process of training us in 'habits of the soul' that lead us to depend on God. Just to think that God is at work, even in the trying, is encouraging.
And then I just thought how Lewis put this was funny:
"It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have."
For those of us with second-rate brains, this is very reassuring... ;-)
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