In C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy we get to see what life would be like in a sinless world.

What is the point of such imaginations? Comparing our life, which in almost every aspect in tainted with unnatural desires, to lives that don't even comprehend what it would be to grasp any good thing solely for the pleasure that it brings...the only conclusion we can come to is that we are indeed "bent." Out of alignment, we feel want where we should feel content. We consider always what we have left behind, missed, or has taken from us...instead of seeing the actual joy that is in the present moment. For creatures in time...we cannot abide the "now" and are ever looking only to before or after.

There are many proposed formulas today on how to attain the satisfied life. Deny yourself in order to save so that you will never want...work enough so you can finally stop working--these are some of the most common anecdotes for attaining happiness. Lewis proposes something else entirely I think. Stop wanting that which you feel you deserve or need, and instead find contentment in the thought that all goods flow from the same source. The spring which brings one also brings the other. Wherever the currents of life direct you, all the ocean rests in His hands. If you receive gladly what the Giver gives, how can life ever hold disappointment?

I know this sounds simplistic--and today things seem much more complicated. Even if I tried very hard there is no escaping the fact that I live in a sinful world and thus all my positive thinking comes to naught in the end because people are just bad and all this will end. Ransom, the hero of Lewis' story, is himself confronted with hopelessness. Even he, who had seen things that I only imagine, found that the cynical truth was that there was in the end nothing worth hoping for...or so it seemed. Yet he fought and walked on as he was led, and when he had failed himself, he found that God had not failed him. I think that was the real truth that Lewis was getting at. Ransom's road was difficult and more then he was able to handle. He was only a man...and fighting the battle of good versus evil was too much for him. What hope can there be for a man against the "unman." We are temporary...our lives go like leaves in the wind. Yet perhaps it is because all this is temporary that I must cling to the hope and trust in His hands all the more. To resist and cling to my life will not lengthen my days a single hour...but if I choose to move my will with His, I can for the first time know what true freedom is like and have the contentment of actual hope.

Seeing the end of my personal ambitions and hopes is not a bad thing then...to come to peace and hope that cannot truly die, I must have all traces of my own false hopes washed away entirely. If I am to ever look out on the shapeless horizon with joy, believing that the unknown holds only more goodness from the hands that I rest upon...I must give up ever attempting to determine with my own desires the way that I will go to meet that horizon.