Concentric Waves

I enjoy when I get out of work at noon and I have a little quiet time before the kids start getting home from school.  As much as I enjoy being around people...joking around and hearing their stories and having a pretty big, noisy family as well, I have learned over the years that I am an introverted person in that I derive my energy from my quiet times.  Sometimes I waste my quiet time and don't get much done...but, I have been trying to be more intentional to use my time wisely.  I started wondering some time ago if I was really challenging my mind enough...and so, I decided to start reading some works of C.S. Lewis and others in order to walk with them in some of their thought processing.  I am finishing up "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis for the third time (it takes me a little while to grasp his thinking :)  However, there is this page in the book that really impacts me each time I have read it....it describes the type of person I want to be...I guess maybe this woman that is described is kind-of like the Proverbs 31 woman...but, in Lewis's book, it describes more of the love she has for others than the things she accomplishes....so, in that way it is a little different. It is that type of love that I desire for people and not a self-serving kind of love that makes this page always so special to me.  Here it is...the characters have just come upon a sort of procession for this woman who was never famous on earth....

"And who are all these young men and women on each side?" "They are her sons and daughters."  "She must have had a very large family, Sir?"  "Every young man or boy that met her became her son- even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door.  Every girl that met her was her daughter."  "Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?"  "No. There are those that steal other people's children.  But her motherhood was of a different kind.  Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more.  Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers.  But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives."...It goes on to talk about how she cared for all of God's creation as well...."And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them."  "Yes," he said.  "It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further.  Who knows where it will end?  Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength.  But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe to life."

Doesn't Lewis have a way with words?....and I think a great faith too in that he believes it is possible for us (me) to have this perfect kind of love for others....where all people can love better when encountering the me that has an abundant life in Christ.  What if the joy we have in loving God...spreads to a joy in loving others....spreads ultimately to a joy that can waken all dead things in the universe to life....??(makes me want to make a big splash :)