Friends,
If you’re receiving this, then somewhere along the way you found yourself on my website and put your email address in the “News and Updates” form. Since then, I have emailed you precisely zero times. I regret waiting so long, and I hope you can forgive me.
From now on, I commit to sending you periodic updates with two brief sections. Section One will be ideas or meditations drawn from my recent studies. Section Two will be a peek into the projects I’m working on. If that sounds good to you, we’ll get started right away.
Reflection
Last week, I read an essay by St. John Chrysostom on raising children. In it, he imagines the child’s soul as a city that God will, we hope, one day indwell. The gates of that city are the child’s senses: everything they see, smell, hear, taste, or touch enters the city and has its effect, for better or worse. The guardians of the gates are the child’s parents.
This, of course, resonated with me as the father of three boys whose city gates I have the ability (and so responsibility) to protect. It was also a healthy reminder that I am a city of my own, and adulthood does not immunize me from the toxic effects of bad inputs. Is anyone immune?
C. S. Lewis didn’t think so. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal … it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” He wrote these words in The Weight of Glory, and the weight of our responsibility to our children, selves, and neighbors is indeed immense. “So heavy that only humility can carry it.”
Thankfully, as we build our cities and keep watch over their gates, it remains true that “unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain,” and “unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain.” Ps. 127.
So, this week I’ve been reflecting on that tension between prayer and perseverance—the tension between trusting and managing the entrusted.
Projects
A few months ago, I launched an appellate legal practice, not instead of my former practice but in addition to it. YouTube unfortunately took a back seat while I was getting oriented to appeals, but I think I’m oriented now.
In preparation for my next batch of YouTube videos, I’ve been working through the ten books that most shaped C. S. Lewis. For a man said to have “read everything and remembered everything he read,” I suspect there will be a wealth of gold to unearth from these books. In fact, there already has been, and I’m excited to share it with you.
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Until then, may the Lord build your house and keep watch over your city so that your work and watch will be effective.
Grace and peace to you,
KRQ
