Quotes from C.S. Lewis - First Week of Advent

During Advent, Anchor Community Church is reflecting on Scripture and writings from C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation. A free booklet by Dr. Joel Heck is available in the Foyer, or you can follow the Anchor Blog for daily postings. If you like the thoughtfulness of C.S. Lewis, if you want to think more deeply about the Incarnation, if you want to keep Christ in Christmas, join us.

First Sunday of Advent

The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, come into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.

~ C.S. Lewis, "The Grand Miracle," God in the Dock, pg80.


First Monday of Advent

The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a Woman's body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p179


First Tuesday of Advent

He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p148


First Wednesday of Advent

Just as every natural event is the manifestation at a particular place and moment of Nature's total character, so every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p143


First Thursday of Advent

In this descent and reascent everyone will recognize a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into some thing hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life reascends. It is the pattern of all animal generation too.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p148


First Friday of Advent

The Incarnation was God's 'weak moment': when Omnipotence becomes a baby in a manger has 'weakened' itself.... The temptation...is precisely a temptation to evade the self-imposed weaknesses, to be strong, omnipotent, again - to make stones into bread, to be emperor of the world, to do 'levitations'. The weakness was the strength.

~ C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters III, p 409ff


First Saturday of Advent

No woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal, without Him. But once, and for a special purpose, He dispensed with that long line which is His instrument: once His life-giving finger touched a woman without passing through the ages of interlocked events.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p182