Lewis noted that his grief, at times, felt like being intoxicated or dazed from a blow to the head: “. . . it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed.” It separated him from people, making it difficult to interact with them. “There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says . . . It is so uninteresting.” Yet he does did not desire to be alone. “I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.” Lewis describes what I have observed clinically: people in mourning want to be with people without having to talk with them. Family and friends can be helpful by just being there.

Nicholi, Armand (2002-04-03). The Question of God (p. 199). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

“If we really believe what we say we believe—if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ‘wandering to find home,’ why should we not look forward to the arrival?”

Nicholi, Armand (2002-04-03). The Question of God (p. 239). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

That same power, the power almost like a force of hurricane, also has a surgical precision, and love and personality to bend down on one knee and look you in the eye and say ‘I care about you’. In fact, ‘I die for you’ just so I could have a relationship with you


Josh Benudim - Teaching on the book of Habakuk "crying out to God" 

We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn't for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people's sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. ..... I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Not it matters, and I find I didn't.


Bridge players tell me that there must be some money on the game ' or else people won't take it seriously.' Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not four counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world... Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself. 


- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed - 

"It's all right Abraham, I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there."

Pursuit of God, AW Tozer, blessedness of possessing nothing, location 226

"Does God Care?" I know of only one way to answer that question, and it has come through my study of the life of Jesus. In Jesus, God gave us a face.
- he wept when his friend Lazarus died
- tears came to him when he looked over Jerusalem
- at the cross 'my god my god why have your forsaken me'

Again, I find it strangely comforting that when jesus faced pain he responded much as I do. He did not pray in the garden, "Oh, Lord, I am so grateful that you have chosen me to suffer on your behalf. I rejoice in the privilege!" No, he experienced sorrow, fear, abandonment, and something approaching even desperation.

"I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross......In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statute of Buddha - - his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agony of the world. But each time, after awhile, I have had to turn away. And in imagination, I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross -- nails through his hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me ! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross, which symbolizes divine suffering. The cross of Christ is God's only self justification in such a world as ours." John Stott

.. that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device which will make pain not to be pain. it doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

CS Lewis - A grief observed, pg 670 chapter 2

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

CS Lewis - Screwtape Letters

And then one or other dies (death). And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career - something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape.

It (death of beloved) follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.

Then comes the tragic figure of the dance in which we must learn to be still taken out of ourselves though the bodily presence is withdrawn, to love the very Her, and not fall back to loving our past, or our memory, or our sorrow, or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.

A grief observed - CS lewis, pg 678

The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness.... But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.

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

We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn't for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people's sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. ...... If i had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled 'Illness' 'Pain' ' Death' and 'Loneliness'. I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. not it matters, and I find I didn't.

Bridge players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously.' Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not four counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. .... Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

CS Lewis - A grief observed

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

Dostoevsky

They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory

C.S Lewis

The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God's kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification. In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. it is the same with the children of the King of kings. The clue to understanding all his dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives he is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ. Sometimes the chiseling process is painful and the discipline irksome, but then the scripture reminds us: (Heb 12: 6-7, 11)

Packer, Knowing God, pg 222

As believers, we find in the cross of Christ assurance that we, as individuals, are beloved of God: "the Son of God ... loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). Knowing this, we are able to apply to ourselves the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28). Not just some things, but all things!!

Thus, so far as we are concerned, God is love to us - holy, omnipotent love - at every moment and in every event of every day's life. Even when we cannot see the why and the wherefore of God's dealing, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong. We know that the true story of our life, when known, will prove to be, as the hymn says, "mercy from first to last" - and we are content.