“All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.²⁸ “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:27-30

“We must distinguish two things which might both possibly be called ‘nearness to God’. One is likeness to God. God has impressed some sort of likeness to Himself, I suppose, in all He has made. Space and time, in their own fashion, mirror His greatness; all life, His fecundity; animal life, His activity. Man has a more important likeness than these by being rational. Secondly, there is what we may call nearness of approach. If this is what we mean, the states in which a man is ‘nearest’ to God are those in which he is most surely and swiftly approaching his final union with God. And as soon as we distinguish nearness-by-likeness and nearness-of-approach, we see that they do not necessarily coincide. 

Perhaps an analogy may help. Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home. At mid-day we come to the top of a cliff where we are, in space, very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But as we are no crags-men, we can’t get down. We must go a long way round; five miles, maybe. At many points during that detour we shall, statically, be far further from the village than we were when we sat above the cliff. But only statically. In terms of progress, we shall be far ‘nearer’ our baths and teas. At the cliff’s top we are near the village, but however long we sit there we shall never be any nearer to our bath and our tea. What is near Him by likeness is never, by that fact alone, going to be any nearer. But nearness of approach is, by definition, increasing nearness. Hence, our imitation of God in this life – that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states – must be an imitation of God incarnate; our model is Jesus.” (Getting Closer to God, The Four Loves, C.S.Lewis – from Preparing For Easter; Fifty Devotional Readings from C.S. Lewis)

We are inherently near to G-d because we have been made in G-d’s image. As such, we are people of G-d. But to be nearer to G-d in practice requires a life where we approach a likeness of Christ in the workshop, in the classroom, in the streets, and in the family dwelling. We must seek the “Divine life operating under human conditions”, as C.S. Lewis states – which is a daily increasing toward the likeness of Christ.

Pastor Dave