HABITS: LETTER 2 OF THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS ✍️
CHAPTER NINE
HABITS: LETTER 2 OF THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS ✍️
The Christmas gathering had been filled with laughter, friendship and a sense of peace in a world that seemed to have very little of either.
Eventually, the evening began to wind down. Cups were collected, coats were gathered and conversations that had lasted through dinner continued near the door.
Erynn was still talking to Scott.
Blue noticed, but there was nothing unusual about it. They were talking about books. Erynn had already said that she loved reading stories, and Scott could talk about stories with almost anyone. Blue knew that. That was the problem.
So she acted as though nothing bothered her. Besides, she knew who Scott was going home with.
Jean knew Blue well enough to recognize the act. She had seen that look before, and perhaps understood it better than Blue realized. There had been moments when Jean herself had discovered something about Scott that was difficult not to notice.
Now Erynn seemed to be discovering it too.
She laughed at something Scott said, and Jean glanced toward Blue.
Blue smiled.
Wartime Britain understood scarcity. Apparently, the heart did too.
Eventually, everyone said goodnight and the gathering came to an end.
But something small had followed Blue out the door.
Nothing had happened between Scott and Erynn. Blue knew that too. Yet knowing something and feeling something were not always the same thing.
Perhaps that was one reason old habits could be so difficult to recognize. They did not always announce themselves as habits. Sometimes they appeared as a thought, a feeling, an assumption—or simply the direction in which someone looked.
Later, Scott returned to The Screwtape Letters.
Letter 2 began with news Screwtape did not particularly like.
The Patient had become a Christian.
Wormwood had failed to prevent it.
But Screwtape was not ready to give up. The man’s conversion had changed the direction of his life, but it had not instantly changed everything about him. There were still habits, expectations and old ways of seeing that could be used against him.
Soon the Patient would encounter something remarkably ordinary.
Other Christians.
Real ones.
Not the people he had imagined when he thought about Christianity, but the people actually sitting around him in church—with their different appearances, personalities, mannerisms and imperfections.
Screwtape wanted him to notice, not so that he might understand them, but so that he might judge them.
Scott stopped reading.
That sounded familiar.
A person could know something was true and still react according to an older way of thinking. A new direction did not necessarily erase every habit formed along the old one.
Maybe conversion was not the end of that struggle.
Maybe it was where another part of it began.
And sometimes the distance between the person someone was and the person they were becoming could be measured in something as small as a glance.
HABITS
Birdsong chirps, happy as can be,
while the crystal ball glows.
The Patient’s been converted,
but old habits are hard to break.
Will you stop to see
what the future holds? 🔮
🎬 HABITS
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🎬 WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🎆
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