You can ‘google’ the title and read it online right now! Or visit a bookstore, get your own copy, and then take it to your favorite coffee shop or park. I find myself returning to this essay at least once a year. In fact, I checked my records, and I blogged about it almost a year ago (September 7, 2007).

So why bring it up again? The reason is that we need to help the people to whom we preach – including ourselves! – to think biblically about desire and its connection to life in the new heaven and new earth. Lewis reminds us that while the New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, self-denial is not an end in itself: “We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.”

The problem is that in a fallen world, “the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object.” So, says Lewis, we fool around “with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. . . . We are far too easily pleased.”

One of the challenges, then, is to realize that our longings, including the memory of our own past, points us to a greater reality. They are “good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols.”

Another challenge has to do with the pain we feel in the present. I love the following line from Lewis. It’s so blunt that it makes me laugh and cry at the same time: “Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning.” Wow, that’s my world!

I’m thinking about the sermon texts I plan to preach in the next few weeks. Re-reading The Weight of Glory motivates me to show how these texts point us to the glory that is to be revealed in us!