Contrasts are illustrative. Seeing the cleaver between two practices brings a clarity that cannot be found otherwise. 

 

Wormwood articulates the divide separating the demonic realm from the one belonging to his Enemy, which is God.

 

"To us a human is primarily food. Our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) merely propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself- creatures whose life, on a miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food. He wants servants who can finally become sons."- The Screwtape Letters

 

God's love is a vast reality. His overarching goal is that we find genuine joy. Yet coercion is not in the list of approved tactics to achieve it. That would be like using a sledgehammer to coax a rose to bloom, or blasting a bullhorn to invite hummingbirds to alight on your wisteria.

 

There is a video created by Off the Left Eye that employs a creative spread of ways to express these two influences. Diagrams, stories, quotes, and drawings all add depth to the notion that we exist in a balance between opposing forces. The pictures add a dimension not always available in words alone. 

 

Such measures bring home to me the reach of Divine protection.