sigh dear friends. i am so confused. and i am so sad, because my latin team is going through a lot of problems, and there's a chance that there won't be a latin team anymore. of course i can still dance and compete with my studio, but no team... ):


SIGHHHHHH.


i was reading the screwtape letters recently.

this is one passage i read and re read and re read it...
i was touched, and sad, and in a way, i just felt that God really loves us...


"And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistable and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. for His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little ovverriding at the beginning.

He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. he leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.

We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with, the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do the Enemy's will,looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."