Urban Skye

05/05/2026

I would rather be what God
chose to make me than the most glorious
creature that I could think of;
For to have been born in God's thought
and then made by God
is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.

- George MacDonald

05/01/2026

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis On Three Ways of Writing for Children

04/25/2026

03/31/2026

During the course of his life, C.S. Lewis made a number of incisive observations about God, human nature, our place in the world, among many other topics. We are all in pursuit of happiness, but do we really have a good grasp of what happiness is? What follows are some of Lewis’s observations about “happiness.”

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“If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad. Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic. [1. C.S. Lewis (God in the Dock,”Answers to Questions on Christianity” (1944), ans. 5, p. 52.)]

God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. [2. C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, bk. II, chap. 3, para. 7, p. 54.)]

A “right to happiness”… sounds to me as odd as a right to good luck. For I believe – whatever, one school of moralists may say – that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery on circumstances outside all human control. A right to happiness doesn’t, for me, make much moře sense than a right to be six feet tall, or to have a millionaire for your father, or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic. [3. C.S. Lewis (God in the Dock, “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness’” (1963), para. 5-6, p. 318.)]

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best… As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better, but I can’t give any advice on it.”

[4. C.S. Lewis (God in the Dock, “Answers to Questions on Christianity” (1944), ans. 11, pp. 58–59.)]

03/24/2026

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (1Corintians 13:4-8)

The Bible tells us that God is love. We know that the three persons of the Trinity have a perfect relationship of love with each other—so much so that the Trinity is One God. The scripture above is our definition of love. But has the Father ever been tempted to become impatient with the Spirit? Has the Spirit ever been rude to the Son? Has the Son ever thought of keeping a record of wrongs against the Father? Obviously not. This definition of love only applies when something has gone wrong. It's how God loves the fallen and sinful human race (you and me). And it is the way we are to love one another.

So, you have tried to love someone. You have done your best to show him or her real love. You've read 1Corinthians 13. It is the way you yourself would like to be loved; but no matter how hard you try, you cannot muster the patience, or the forgiveness, or even the hope it obviously requires. It seems better not to try, because at least then it doesn't hurt as much. Yes, it would be so much easier to quit investing into a relationship with no returns.

However, “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

Love is the answer because there is no other. To quit loving someone is to condemn that part of yourself to an existence outside the love of the Triune God. It will be done to you as you have done to others. Freely give to others as you have received from God. Accept the undeserved love God has for you—and pass that love onto those who don't deserve yours.

—Mike Sares, Urban Skye Director

03/16/2026

"When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time."
— Rick Warren

03/07/2026

“Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

"All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness, have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of the children. These wise and prudent, careful to make the words of his messengers rime with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, not by their own hearts, but by their miserable intellects; and, postponing the obedience which alone can give power to the understanding, press upon men’s minds their wretched interpretations of the will of the Father, instead of the doing of that will upon their hearts. They call their philosophy the truth of God, and say men must hold it, or stand outside. They are the slaves of the letter in all its weakness and imperfection,—and will be until the spirit of the Word, the spirit of obedience shall set them free."

― George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel

03/03/2026

“Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become 'jolly beggars.'

The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced."

— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

02/27/2026

"Only love is capable of genuine transformation. Will power is inadequate. Even spiritual effort is not up to the task. If we are to become great lovers, we must return again and again to the great love of the Great Lover. Thomas Merton reminds us that the root of Christian love is not the will to love but the faith to believe that one is deeply loved by God. Returning to that great love – a love that was there for us before we experienced any rejection and that will be there for us after all other rejections take place – is our true spiritual work. Embarking on the journey of Christian spiritual transformation Is enrolling in the divine school of love. Our primary assignment in this school is not so much to study and practice as it is letting ourselves be deeply loved by our Lord."

—Dr. David G Benner

01/20/2026

“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. … For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?

But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.”

01/14/2026

"The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive. ... But there is a second fact about Birthdays, and the birth-song of all creation, a fact which really follows on this; but which, as it seems to me, the other school of thought almost refuses to recognize. The point of that fact is simply that it is a fact. In being glad about my Birthday, I am being glad about something which I did not myself bring about."

— from G.K. Chesterton, WEEKLY, March 21, 1935