Last night I went to see The Screwtape Letters performed at a theater in Minneapolis. It was a wonderful show. They had C.S. Lewis’s books for sale in the lobby, so I picked up a copy of The Weight of Glory, which is a series of addresses he gave in different venues in England.

The message, The Weight of Glory, has one of my favorite quotes from Lewis about how we are “far too easily pleased.”

His address ends in part like this:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. we must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in face, the merriest kind) which exists  between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously — no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner — no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

Consider that everyone you meet today will be immortal. Consider the power of the Kingdom you can bring to their lives, and the power of the Kingdom they may very well bring to you.