"The Eloi"

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"As God lives in his own will, and we live in him, so has he given to us power to will in ourselves. How much better should we not fare if, finding that we are standing with our heads bowed away from the good, finding that we have no feeble inclination to seek the source of our life, we should yet will upwards toward God, rousing that essence of life in us, which he has given us from his own heart, to call again upon him who is our Life, who can fill the emptiest heart, rouse the deadest conscience, quicken the dullest feeling, and strengthen the feeblest will!

Then, if ever the time should come, as perhaps it must come to each of us, when all consciousness of well-being shall have vanished, when the earth shall be but sterile promontory, and the heavens a dull and pestilent congregation of vapors, when man nor woman shall delight us more, nay, when God himself shall be but a name, and Jesus an old story, then, even then, when a Death far worse than 'that phantom of grisly bone' is griping at our hearts, and having slain love, hope, faith, forces existence upon us only in agony, then, even then, we shall be able to cry out with our Lord, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' Nor shall we die then, I think, without being able to take up his last words as well, and say, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.'"

- George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Vol. 1. "The Eloi"

To see the greatness of God as the one who is the essence of life, the one who gives from his own heart, the one who is our very life and can fill the emptiest heart, and yet to know that one day we must face the feeling of utter abandonment by that same God... To then urge us to call out to him nonetheless... A high calling indeed. But one Christ lived out more fully than we ever will. Can we do anything less than follow in his footsteps? 

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