Like eggs

Yesterday's Trappist isolationist advice included reading. Their monastery obviously has a good library. Mine has thinned out recently but in this time of enforced quiet I have opened again old books. A passage in my yellowing copy of C.S. Lewis'  Mere Christianity (bought for two shillings in 1965) struck me again.

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in...

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work in the right part of us.  It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through.  Jesus never talked vague, idealistic gas. When he said:' Be perfect' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact it is impossible.  It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present and you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad.  ....This is the whole of Christianity.

It is hard but now that I have more time the possibility of listening to that other voice, letting that larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in - letting the Holy Spirit work in me - should be easier.  Should be......