Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

Much like Lewis in his Reflections on the Psalms, this musing is not the work of any real scholarship on my part. It stems from an interesting connection that I have seen between the poem "And did those feet in ancient time" by William Blake and the curious pondering of Samuel Sewall about the role of the New World in Christian eschatology. Sewall was a native of England and one of the early Puritan North American settlers. He was an abolitionist who argued against slavery from a Biblical perspective and repented of his role in the Salem Witch Trials. He authored a pamphlet that presented the New World as having a significant part in Christ's return to earth and the establishment of his Kingdom here. While I do not see eye to eye Sewall on this point, I did find this a rather curious line of thinking and thought it came out of left field. That is until I read the poem by Blake. In the poem "And did those feet in ancient time", published much later than the Sewa...

I am under this fantasy that there will be required reading for my boys when they are older. I recently finished reading C.S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms and I think that I found the finest chapter that he has ever written in any book of his that I have read. Chapter 9, A Word about Praising , framed the act of praising God in a way that I had not contemplated before. It was so simple it was radical and it helped me come to a deeper understanding of who I am and why I am. Even though Lewis is no fundamentalist I am absolutely going to add this chapter to my "Required Reading" list for my boys. I hope that this list is not just a fantasy of mine. I would like the things that have been helpful to me to be helpful to them as well. I just need to make sure that I am not disappointed if they do not derive the same value out of it than I have. They are unique individuals after all and God has a different course for them than He had (has) for me.