The Apologist's Evening Prayer

About a week ago, I was defending the Trinity to my housemate, who is a kind of Unitarian. I offered the best arguments I could, and some of them seemed to at least challenge him a little. But in the silence as I went to sleep after the conversation (it finished very, very late) I found that I could not rest trusting in a God I could defend with my own words and arguments. But a God who was far beyond anything I could hope to understand, a God in no need of my defence: such a God had arms I could rest in.

While in the mountains over the past few days, I found this beautiful offering by C.S. Lewis, in a book of his poems. It struck a real chord with me, and I hope it can mean something to some of you:

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more

From all the victories that I seemed to score;

From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf

At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;

From all my proofs of Thy divinity,

Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead

Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.

From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,

O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.

Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,

Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.