A Big Girl Book and a Childhood Classic

It's day 2 of snowpocalypse in the Tri-Cities, and I'm staying toasty at home with big piles of books and unlimited Amazon Prime. I've also baked three dozens of cookies and looked at the piles of boxes beckoning me to pack in anticipation of my big move. But I'm finding most comfort in reading and writing.

My family - who has known me all my life - will not deny that I have loved books since I was little. I read everything from Little Women to the Baby Sitters Club, and my voracious appetite for books has not changed since then. I love to stretch my brain with different kinds of books and reading challenges. At the beginning of the year I signed on to Haley Stewart's Cath-lit Reading Challenge. She suggests reading more than one book at a time, and since the beginning of January, I've been working on two books, Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and St. Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias. However, when I saw that the Abiding Together podcast was reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I took a break from Dostoevsky and picked up CS Lewis.

This morning I was listening to the final episode in Abiding Together's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series and heard a really beautiful comment:

"When you journey with Jesus, you get to see him bring things back to life. You get to see him bring hearts of stone to hearts of flesh."

The hosts were talking about the moment when Aslan breathes on the stone statues and brings them back to life. When I reread this book, that was a part I paid special attention to, especially when Aslan breathes on the lion and brings it back to life. I love the little lion's reaction of awe at Aslan and when the whole gang comes together to defeat the White Witch, the lion is excited to be "a lion like Aslan." But Aslan keeps him humble, and the little lion comes to the realization that he's like Aslan, but Aslan is still bigger and greater than he is.

It had to be divine intervention that earlier this morning I also read St. Hildegard's words:

"But you, O human, who seek in the way of humans to know more fully the loftiness of this counsel, are opposed by a concealing barrier; for you must not search into the secrets of God beyond this things the Divine Majesty wills to be revealed for love of those who trust in him."

Humans aren't too different from that little lion. Once we know who Jesus is, we're excited to walk with him and go on a great adventure with him and watch him revive statues into moving creatures and breathe life into hearts of stone. It's exciting to journey with him, and really once we start to do so, we realize there is no turning back because there is no greater adventure. But he is so much bigger than us. He is majetic, and with that Majesty comes Mystery.

This is something that St. Hildegard captures in her Scivias. God doesn't reveal everything to us right away. People may think that's selfish of him, or that he is holding back from us - but that isn't the case. I prefer it this way. I like knowing that the God of all the universe knows more than me, is bigger than me, is more powerful than me. If it weren't so, would he even be God? It's something to consider. In our humanity, we don't always realize the gift of surrender - and it is a gift. To leave things up to God to take care of is a gift because we can't do it all. He can. And when we let him do it, we are more free than we could have ever imagined.

Just some of the books I'm reading as part of the "Cath-lit" Challenge...what are some others I shoudl tackle?