On Screwtape, Giving Trees, and Pouring Out

This week, I spent a whole day reading C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. The book is a set of letters coming from the senior demon, Screwtape, to his just-out-of-college nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape has persuaded many to join the ranks of the Devil, whom they refer to as Our Father Below. The letters consist of his advice and admonitions towards Wormwood, who has just received his first 'patient' and is eager to please. 

   
I was very convicted by these letters, and some of the advice old Screwtape gave his nephew chilled me with its accuracy.

Screwtape is a master at pinning down the problem and telling exactly what's to be done about it. Yet he grows angered and wild as he writes about it, because there is one thing he can't pin down: the Enemy Himself. 

He doesn't understand this love that the so-called 'Enemy' professes for the humans. He insists that there must be some other reason to fight for them, some hidden plot that makes them important somehow. Yet he cannot come up with a plausible excuse. This frustrates him to no end. 

Another book I read lately is The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. It's a children's book, but I found it haunting and poignant all the same. In it, a tree is loved by a little boy, and it loves the little boy back with all its heart. It gives him fruit and leaves and a firm base to climb on. 

But the little boy grows up. He begins to search for what he calls happiness; money and jobs and a fine house with a wife. He leaves the tree to find these things, coming back only once in a while. Whenever he does come back, the tree gives him something to help him in his quest for happiness--apples to sell, branches for a house, and her trunk for a boat. She never thinks twice about the cost her giving will bring upon herself, she only thinks of the boy she loves. 

I think that God wants to be a sort of Giving Tree to us. He pours out love and blessings on us, and the cost is canceled out by the enormous love he gives as well. 

So while I'm often a Screwtape, jabbing at God with accusations and questions, I also realize that He calls me to follow His example and be a Giving Tree in His image, handing out myself and my gifts to His people as He does. 

As Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:6, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come." 

I, for one, am going to pour myself out before Him, that He may make me new.