Possible Future Blessings

Over the past few years I have listened to many of my friends talking with a sense of sadness about their relationship with God. They often reflect back to the early days of their relationship and wish that they could recapture the feelings of love and joy that made their journey with God so exciting. Because they feel that they are no longer able to capture these feelings in the way that they once did they question their relationship with God and wonder if they have done something or else has God changed. About such things CS Lewis warns that this mind set can make us miss "possible future blessings". He writes,

"On every level in life... we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and deprecating all other occasions by comparisons. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessings if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we're still looking for the old one.

This applies especially to the devotional life. Many religious people lament that the first fervours of their conversion have died away. They think - sometimes rightly, but not, I believe always - that their sins account for this. They may even try by pitiful efforts of will to revive what now seem to have been the golden days. But were those fervours ever intended to last? And how should the Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once."

CS Lewis in 'Prayer: Letters to Malcolm'

(Over Christmas I read a few CS Lewis books. Lewis is one of 3 mentors who I've never met, have influenced my life. my church is probably fed up whenever they hear me quoting him. The other two are Eugene Peterson & John Piper)