The Great Iconoclast

I've been reading passages from several different books that C.S. Lewis wrote, they have been compiled in a book called, "A Year with C.S. Lewis, Daily Reading from His Classic Works."   And wanted to share an excerpt from a book He wrote called "A Grief Observed."  In the book he is working through his grief over the death of his wife:

"It doesn't matter that all the photographs of H. are bad.  It doesn't matter-- not much-- if my memory of her is imperfect.  Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves.  Merely links.  Take a parallel from an infinitely higher sphere.  Tomorrow morning a priest will give me a little round, then, cold, tasteless wafer.  Is it a disadvantage-- is it not in some ways an advantage-- that it can't pretend the least resemblance to that with which it unites me?
I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.  I want H., not something that is like her.  A really good photograph might become in the end a snare, a horror, and an obstacle.
Images, I must suppose, have their use or they would not have been so popular. (It makes little difference whether they are pictures and statues outside the mind or imaginative constructions within it.) To me, however, their danger s more obvious.  Images of the Holy easily become holy images-- sacrosanct.  My idea of God is not a divine idea.  It has to be shattered time after time.  He shatters it Himself.  He is the great iconoclast.  Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?  The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.  And most are 'offended' by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not.  But the same thing happens in our private prayers.
All reality is iconoclastic.  The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her.  And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness.  That is, in her foursquare and independent reality.  And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead."


The Lord has done this for me over and over! I start thinking He is one thing and then He just blows it up-- that image I made up-- and proves me wrong, showing me who He really is in the area of my wrong thoughts. It's constant learning, constant getting to know Him for who He is instead of who I make Him up to be. I want a real God, not one I make up. I'm glad He is so faithful to reveal Himself to us when we seek Him.