We are, not
metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is
making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has
a certain character. Here again we come
up against what I have called the intolerable compliment. Over
a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it
is not exactly as he meant it to be. But
over the great picture of his life – the work which he loves, though in a
different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child – he
will take endless trouble – and would doubtless, thereby, give endless trouble
to the picture if it were sentient. One
can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced
for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making
was over in a minute. In the same way,
it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and
less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
--C. S. Lewis, The Problem
of Pain
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