The Value of Distance

"I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for ad rive. This meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon. The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed "infinite riches" in what would have been to motorists "a little room." The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it "annihilates space." It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there." - C.S. Lewis

It's been said that familiarity breeds contempt, and I think that has tremendously horrifying implications for Christians that experience it in their lives. I think that what C.S. Lewis says in the quote above (from his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, which is great by the way) has related warnings for Christians who have lost their "value of distance."

For we were once absolutely separated from God. The word "absolutely" is even insufficient, because it fails to convey the true nature of our separation. We were further than New Jersey is from California, than the U.S. is from South Africa, than Earth is from the Sun, than this galaxy is from the furthest galaxy. To continue in the same vein of these metaphors, we were not even in the same universe as God. Maybe to some another picture would pierce even further: we were as far as a heart broken by unrequited love is from the unattainable object of its forlorn adoration.

But thanks be to God, that infinite distance was amazingly bridged for us by Christ, and by means that we will never be able to wrap our minds completely around, we are now offered direct, intimate, and close fellowship with our Creator, Friend, and King.

Alas, it seems that all good things in this world must be paired with an evil, and in this case the evil is that we, who have been brought near to Him who was once impossibly distant, eventually forget about the gap that has been done away with for us. Our understanding and appreciation of our nearness "lowers the value of distance" for us. And this lowered value perverts and corrodes our gratitude, joy, and peace.

May it be my daily endeavor to passionately value and treasure the distance that has been bridged for me.