A Grief Observed

Dickerson-Ford1

Paula Dickerson-Ford

Prof. Dr. Raymond Ide

LIT 321 C. S. Lewis

28 September 2013

A Grief Observed Final

Death is inevitable. We will by Gods determination leave this earth and our loved ones

either before or behind us and go on to some eternal state. This places the burden of grief on

the God decided one who is the latter to go. The journal entries of Lewis, A Grief Observed are

the accounts of how he who is left behind observes his own grief.

Lewis had come to believe in Christ and proclaimed Him as his Savior. He believed in Heaven

as a real place, a place he would go to someday yet even that was not sufficient comfort to his

anguish, bewilderment and emptiness of the lost love he experienced when the love of his life

died. Grief is an emotion experienced when someone or something we still love is taken before

we had decided they are no longer of use to us. Love is at the center of God and the center of

grief. Love has depth. It has the kind of depth that penetrates the outer body and lives in the

heart. It is this correlation that caused Lewis to question the God he had defended.

Helen Joy Davidman Gresham AKA Mrs. C.S. Lewis was no doubt one of the greatest

loves in Lewis’ life. He may not have loved her the first time he married her technically (though I

think he did without understanding the nature of romantic love). However, he more so loved her

when he again married her before God. In Matthew 22:39 we are commanded to love thy

neighbor as thyself. Loving other people is like loving God. Jesus is our model for real and

authentic love. When it comes to love in a marriage these principles come into view. I believe

Lewis had the order of love right. He could not have knowingly taken a dying woman as wife

without understanding the 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 idea of love as a model. She, an instrument of

God was crafted to lead Lewis to discover another aspect of a relationship with God. Joy as

she was called became such a...