Lewis grieving the death of his wife, Joy in July 1960
A Grief Observed – C. S. Lewis (1961)
Lewis continues, because she is in God’s hands … do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are not in our bodies … in the only life we know he hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine.
As a child I always wondered that if the afterlife was so good, why the all-powerful God I was learning about every Sunday didn’t do something to make life on earth more like it. My logic decided that as He deemed that it was going to be tough regardless of what we did and that we had to suffer to gain access to the nice stuff when we died, it was pointless being good whilst alive.
To be honest, I can’t say that my viewpoint on that matter has changed very much regardless of the passing of the years. After all if you are going to have to suffer, sins or no sins then you might as well have as much fun as possible along the way.
Lewis also asks …
‘Why should the separation … which so agonises the lover who is left behind be painless to the lover who departs?’
Maybe it is … but that I don’t think is anything mere mortals will ever have an answer to.