A Grief Observed: 3 Lessons Learned from C. S. Lewis for 2021
“No one ever told me that grief felt so 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”
It seems appropriate to reflect on the human emotion of grief on the last day in 2020. For many people around the world, this unprecedented and historical year has brought a considerable amount of pain. And globally, humanity has been divinely allowed to sip from the terrifying elixir of mortality.
It is book 48 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenges, and this book is A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis. This book is a series of C. S. Lewis’ most honest and painful reflections have the passing of his wife Helen Joy Davidman, whom he affectionately called H.
The book was first published under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk, as Lewis wanted, but after his death, it was republished in 1963 under its true author's name.
In this small compilation of transparently displayed wounded thoughts, C. S. Lewis speaks honestly to man and God about his grief over the death of H. He suggests that he is trying to map out the human emotion of grief. However, he quickly realizes that there is no end to the map, that if he allowed himself to go one grieving, and not choose some arbitrary moment in time to recover, he will be consumed in his grief.
From this book, I have taken the following three things away about grief and will seek to apply them this last day in 2020, and use them to push forward in hope and trust in God for 2021.
1. Bring Your Honest Suffering to God
“Aren’t all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?”
Walking with the great 20th-century thinker through his grief is like observing a modern David wrestle with God in the Psalms. Sometimes the only thing you can do with suffering is to suffer.
But while Lewis never tries to mask his raw suffering with insincere assurances or affections, he does bring his pain in its raw form to the feet of God. He doesn’t withhold his questions, nor restrain from following his pain to its divine confusion. And yet, like David, he never doubts the supremacy and sovereignty of God over his suffering.
2. Bring Your Mind to Truth
“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.”
While we should be honest with our suffering, we shouldn’t think of suffering as something out of place in an otherwise wonderful and sweet world. Suffering and pain are mere reminders, if not bells ringing to call us back to our gospel-centered reality, that this world is not our home. Our home is prepared for us by the eternal King Jesus, and the very reality of our pain should cause a perhaps emotionally uncomforting but spiritually sobering hope in the kingdom to come.
3. Bring Your House of Cards Down
“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”
Lewis starts his reflections off by pondering if he had any faith before this event at all. Clearly, his words are charged with the reality of his pain, and yet, at this moment is an honest window into God's mysterious work of making us more like him. Here is one of the most respected and prolific Christian authors whose faith is being assaulted by grief, who feels as though his faith before this moment was a house of cards.
My takeaway from this, and I believe is Lewis’ point, is to have a humble faith that is desperately reliant upon the grace of Jesus Christ. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought. For God is able with a mere breath of sovereignty to blown down your whole house of cards.
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.