C.S. Lewis (Image Source)

An excerpt from today's reading of my Lenten devotional book, "Preparing for Easter" by C.S. Lewis, titled "What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?": 

Then we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection. It is very necessary to get the story clear. I heard a man say, ‘The importance of the Resurrection is that is gives evidence of survival, evidence that the human personality survives death.’ On that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened to all men, the difference being that in Christ’s case we were privileged to see it happening. This is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers thought. Something perfectly new in the history of the universe...

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I was feeling pretty low on the general state of humanity yesterday, and rightfully so. Today's Scripture reading of Romans 8:22 shows just how deep our stinkiness sinks: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." Yup, ALL of creation is in a perpetual state of labor because... us. 

Now if you read the title of this post and got hopeful that I had ditched the Debbie Downer-flow I had yesterday and are reading  with a sense of betrayal and dread and you're about to close the tab and head back to Facebook, hold up. Things are about to make a sharp ascent.

This Lent, I'm using Preparing for Easter as a devotional...

Photo taken by K.

Psalm 19 is an utter masterpiece. C.S. Lewis said "I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world." It was part of my devotional reading this morning, and in a month of arctic temps, icy sleet and far too many gray skies, it was like a lovely bit of Spring. 

The first few verses popped out at me (despite the fact I've read this chapter I don't know how many times in the past):