My Response to A Grief Observed (Ch. 3-4)

C.S. Lewis makes some pretty profound and radical statements in chapters three and four of A Grief Observed. I found myself especially reading and rereading pages 42 and 43. When he writes, “But oh God, tenderly, tenderly. Already, month by month and week by week you broke her body on the wheel whilst she still wore it. Is it not yet enough?”, I could feel the pain of my grandmother's passing from over ten years ago. She too died of cancer. When the doctors opened her body to remove it, they just sewed it back up, because they found everything was black and full of disease. This is so painfully sad to me that a person should have to go through this kind of suffering in life.

I love thinking of God as a dentist, though. There is so much hope in that. The dentist does good work, but it is often scary to go to a new one, or to get a wisdom tooth extracted for the first time. The pain is there. It is deep and it is strong, but the pain would be much worse if the wisdom tooth was allowed to grow and impact the rest of the teeth inside of the mouth. God knows exactly what He is doing. He is just because if he weren't, he'd be a flake. I don't want to serve a flowery God who is not strong, mighty and in control, or who never requires us to go through suffering.

On page 52, Lewis mentions that the only way for us to realize that our temple is a house of cards is to have it knocked down. I have found this to be true time and time again in my own life. I want my faith to withstand the trials of life. When I find myself wavering and grasping at the sand of my foundation, I know that I have to reevaluate my priorities. There is something terribly serious about this. If I never went through trials, I wouldn't know that I need to dig deeper to find solid ground to build that foundation on. That takes work and blood, sweat, and tears to do.

I love the fact that through all of the trials that Lewis went through, he did not forget or turn away from God. He knew that God had his hand in every single part of the circumstances that he walked through. That gives me hope to know that when I suffer in life, God is always going to be there even if it seems like he is being a tyrant for a few moments. Even if I have to question God and get angry with Him, as Lewis said, just getting that off of our chests and expressing it is therapeutic.