"Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility…But
aren’t there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in
calling them 'bad pleasures' I take it we are using a kind of
shorthand. We mean 'pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.' It is the
stealing of the bad apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The
sweetness is still a beam from the glory…I have tried since…to make
every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by
giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant
something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, 'How good of God
to give me this.' Adoration says, 'What must be the quality of that
Being whose far off and momentary coruscations are like this!' One’s
mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun…If this is
Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labor."
C.S. Lewis
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
(as quoted by John Piper in
When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy)
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