Por direito

    "My conversion involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now number it among my greatest mercies that I was permitted for several months, perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising that question. My training was like that of the Jews, to whom He revealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better (or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol. And I did not dream even of that. There are men, far better men than I, who have made immortality almost the central doctrine of their religion; but for my own part I have never seen how a preoccupation with that subject ar the outset could fail to corrupt the whole thing. I had been brought up to believe that goodness was goodness only if it were disinterested, and that any hope of reward or fear of punishment contaminated the will. If I was wrong in this (the question is really much more complicated than I then perceived) my error was most tenderly allowed for. I was afraid that threats or promises would demoralize me; no threats or promises were made. The commands were inexorable, but they were backed by no 'sanctions'. God was to be obeyed simply because He was God. Long since, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of the Absolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself. That is why, though it was a terror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because of what He is in Himself. If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am'. To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him. In His nature His sovereignty de jure is revealed.
    Of course, as I have said, the matter is more complicated than that. The primal and necessary Being, the Creator, has sovereignty de facto as de jure. He has the power as well as the kingdom and the glory. But the de jure sovereignty was made known to me before the power, the right before the might. And for this I am thankful. I think it is well, even now, sometimes to say to ourselves, 'God is such that if (per impossibile) his power could vanish and His other attributes remain, so that the supreme right were forever robbed of the supreme might, we should still owe Him precisely the same kind and degree of allegiance as we now do'. On the other hand, while it is true to say that God's own nature is the real sanction of His commands, yet to understand this must, in the end, lead us to the conclusion that union with that Nature is bliss and separation from it horror. Thus Heaven and Hell come in. But it may well be that to think much of either except in this context of thought, to hypostatize them as if they had substancial meaning apart from the presence or absence of God, corrupts the doctrine of both and corrupts us while we so think of them".

(Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p. 231-232)

Senhor,

Ao contrário de C. S. Lewis, conheci-Te primeiro através das Tuas promessas, e só mais tarde aprendi e apreendi o Teu Senhorio por direito, sobre tudo quanto há. Percorro o percurso inverso ao deste autor, pedindo-Te, "Autor e Consumador da Fé", que me ensines a amar-Te e a obedecer-Te sem olhar a recompensas e ameaças, mas sim (e tão somente) por aquilo que és. Quero ajoelhar-me na Tua presença e em silêncio, em êxtase, ser transformada, purificada, refeita à Tua imagem. Quanto mais olho para Ti, mais me abismo com a Tua formosura, com a minha fealdade e com o Teu amor sobrenatural. Escrevo e oro e penso tantas coisas... Ó Senhor, faz-me nova. Que eu tenha uma vida que "supera intenções" e Te busca na prática, "em espírito e em verdade", dando-Te aquilo que é Teu por direito: toda a honra, toda a glória, todo o poder. Em nome de Jesus, amém.