the focus of our worship ~ Jesus the Lord

While listening to my glorious opera, something reminded me to share this Ravi Zacharias excerpt from his book "Beyond Opinion." The context is keeping the message pure through vigiliant concentration upon the Messenger:

"Speakers fall into a huge trap when they are more concerned about how they say it than whom they are pointing to. C.S. Lewis mentions this in his book "The Great Divorce." The spirit tells the Ghost, a mortal from hell visiting heaven, "When you painted on earth ~ at least in your earlier days ~ it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpse too. But here you are having the thing itself...That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love; you loved paint only as a means of telling about light."

"Oh, that was ages ago," replies the Ghost. "One grows out of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake."

Then the Spirit warns, "Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the things he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower ~ become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."

Art and nature rightly perceived lead to Worship. Forgetting this, seems to me to be the downfall of the scientist. Misses the ForestMaker for analysis of the bark. And hopefully in my zeal for writing, I won't ignore the main character in the Grand Story, "the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us."