Deep thoughts, on a Spring day, curtesy of C.S. Lewis

"My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary, contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over - I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless."

- C.S. Lewis. From the book The Problem of Pain.

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I absolutely ADORE C.S. Lewis. My day doesn't end until I have read at least a small portion from one of his many books. (His non-fiction works, I should specify...) In fact, so encompassing is my obsession that at the age of two my daughter would sit and pretend 'read' from my cookbooks and if you asked her what she was doing her prompt answer was "reading Lewis." His wise words have comforted me during so many difficult times in my life. And they have also encouraged, strengthened and calmed. But in the last several weeks, during national tragedies, local heartaches and personal loss he has challenged me. For his above experience is, of course, mine. As it is everyones. So when we wonder, when we question, when we look around us with disbelieving eyes at so much unstoppable sadness and suffering and grief and words seem to fail us, we need to remember there is a reason. God is at work. He is endeavoring to show us, as many times as it takes, the utter brokenness of our beloved toys before it is too late.