i am continuing my reading through C.S. Lewis' work and am now on "The Problem of Pain." this one, being much more philosophical in nature, is a much thicker read in content but merely 160ish pages. it never ceases to amaze me the relevance that Lewis has today when he was writing to a culture without many of the amenities that we currently enjoy. but i figure that it's appropriate that this is so since we are dealing with the same problems globally that existed in his time or are a cause of the problems that were created in that time. anyway, i wanted to share a quote found on page 31 in this edition that i think that anyone can benefit from, even those that don't believe in a Creative Being that defined all we know:

By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we might be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long at they are contented?' We want , in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves', and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all'. Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds. I do not claim to be an exception: I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction. (any emphasis added is from myself)

just sharing... wow. until then---