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In his series “Beyond Saving Souls,” Jordon Raynor reflects: “By the time C.S. Lewis turned 17, his atheism had been quite fully formed. According to one of his biographers, ‘the rational case for religion was, in Lewis’s view, totally bankrupt.’”
 
But something other than reason kept nagging at Lewis, causing some part of him to long for more than what logic alone could provide. “He continued to find himself experiencing deep feelings of desire,” through “momentary and transient epiphanies” which left “nothing but a memory and a longing.”
 
The most significant of these moments took place when Lewis picked up a copy of a fantasy novel called Phantastes. His biographer writes, “Everything was changed for [Lewis] as a result of reading the book. He had discovered a ‘new quality,’ a ‘bright shadow,’ which seemed to him like a voice calling him from the ends of the earth.”
 
When Lewis opened Phantastes, he was totally closed off intellectually to Christianity. But there was something about that book that was more true, beautiful, and powerful than anything he had ever experienced. This work by George MacDonald—even though it never explicitly mentioned the name of Jesus—clearly accomplished an eternally significant purpose, causing Lewis to “catch a whiff” of what he would later find out only faith in Jesus could provide.
 
If you’re a personal trainer, doctor, or nurse, you are helping people live healthier lives, pointing them to the full restoration of their bodies made possible in Christ’s resurrection. If you’re an entrepreneur, you are fixing what is broken in creation by solving problems for customers, causing them to long for the restoration of all things. If you’re an artist or writer, you have a chance to tell stories that spread the aroma of Christ and what life should be and will be like upon his “triumphal procession” into the New Jerusalem. May God inspire you in your vocational pursuits for Him.