C.S. Lewis

Whenever I think of the hypothetical question regarding the four people, living or dead, I would most like to invite to a dinner party, I always think of C.S. Lewis first. I would love to talk with this guy. He had an amazing intellect, awesome spiritual understanding, and the ability to write in a way that calmly but powerfully sparks the imagination and spirit of his readers. I deeply admire this man.

There are still some of his works that I have yet to read. One of which I finally read today.
A Grief Observed was written by Lewis after the death of his wife Joy. He had been a bachelor most of his life. He and his wife only enjoyed a few years of marriage because she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died.

A Grief Observed is a raw, graphic account of his thoughts as he experienced the pain of losing someone he loved very deeply.

Here are a few quotes that struck me as I read this short book today. Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the ideas presented, as I am still processing them. They did cause me to think, though!

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask- half of our great theological and metaphysical problems- are like that."

"What do people mean when they say. 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?' Have they never even been to a dentist?"

"No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing."

"Unless of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions 'on the further shore' pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There's not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn't be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back.How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! 'Things on this side are not so different after all.' There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored."

"If you're approaching [God] not as the goal, but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions 'on the further shore;' not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End."

There were a ton of other things that jumped out at me as I read. This is definitely a book to ponder over for a long time. And I think thoughts regarding the content of the book will be affected by the reader's continued life experience as well. For example, I read this with a slightly clinical approach because I have never experienced a loss of this magnitude. I've never known a grief that sucks the air from my lungs, pushes me into a spiral of overwhelming emotion, shakes me to the core. But, I realize I will most likely experience it one day if I continue to live.

I like how Lewis tackles some of the most difficult questions in a non-threatening way. Somehow he even manages to question whether or not God is a good God at all without losing sense of the hope we have as Christians.