What follows is an email that I just sent to my students. I think it may help you with whatever you need to do today, whether it is a Zoom business conference or running the vacuum cleaner. It has very few of my own words, and a lot of good thoughts from C. S. Lewis.

“Dear Fellow Students of God’s Word,

Old Testament Interpretation class starts today. Again I say, welcome!

I know that this is a difficult time to focus on anything other than news (or opinions about the news). I must admit that I struggle with this as well.

However, as important as what is going on in our country is right now (and it is important) it is also important to focus on other things, at least part of the time.

I had to turn NPR off in order to reread a sermon by C.S. Lewis title, “Learning in War Time.” I was thinking that there might be something in that might speak to our current situation. I was not disappointed. (Ladies, I am sorry, but Lewis refers to “men” several times in his sermon. I suspect that if he had lived longer, he might have begun to see the error of his ways in this regard.)

“Learning in War Time” was a sermon preached on October 22, 1939. The United Kingdom had declared war on Nazi Germany on September 1 of that year. Even some university faculty were raising the question as to whether or not it was even right to go ahead with university teaching and learning.

Lewis argued that it was more than appropriate to get on with the business of teaching and learning. Here are some quotes from Lewis’ sermon:

“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. . . . If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life’. Life has never been normal.”

“A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.”

“If our parents have sent us to Oxford [or Southeastern University, D.D.], if our country allows us to remain there, this is prima facie evidence that the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life.”

“The learned life then is, for some, a duty. At the moment it looks as if it were your duty.”

“The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorourable. Favourable conditions never come.”

One final quote:

Lewis writes that we must practice “. . . leaving futurity in God’s hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not. Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord’. It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”

So, lets all of us get on with our work, with our loving of our families, with our ministries, our studies! Your instructor is, of course, talking to himself.”