Another Special Life in Christ

These testimony lives are not stories of "role models". Jesus is the role model!
These are lives wonderfully touched & changed by Jesus!

 
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963):

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on November 29, 1898, Clive Staples ("Jack") Lewis was reared in a peculiarly bookish home, one in which the reality he found on the pages of the books within his parents' extensive library seemed as tangible and meaningful to him as anything that transpired outside their doors. His mother died of cancer when he was young (about 10), and his father was distant. As adolescents, Jack and his older brother, Warren, were more at home in the world of ideas and books of the past, than with the material, technological world of the 20th Century. When the tranquility and sanctity of the Lewis home was shattered beyond repair by the cancer death of his mother when he was 9-10, Lewis became extremely embittered and sought refuge in composing stories and excelling in scholastics. Soon thereafter he became precociously oriented toward the metaphysical and ultimate questions. At age 15, he declared himself an atheist.

The rest of his saga and the particulars of his writing career might be seen as the melancholy search for the security he had taken for granted during the peace and grace of his childhood. Not a pacifist, he was in World War I where he met E. C. F. "Paddy" Moore, and they became fast friends, swearing that if either were killed, the survivor would care for both families.. Somewhere in there, he lost his faith. Moore died, and Lewis would care for Moore's mother until she died. In about 1930, he became a theist, becoming a Christian in 1933 (age 35). His joy returned. By Lewis's testimony, this recovery was to be had only in the "joy" he discovered in an adult conversion to Christianity. Long-time friend and literary executor of the Lewis estate, Owen Barfield, has suggested that there were, in fact, three manifestations of "C. S. Lewis." That is to say, during his lifetime Lewis fulfilled three very different vocations-- and fulfilled them successfully.

There was, first, (1) Lewis the distinguished Oxbridge literary scholar and critic; second, (2) Lewis, the highly acclaimed author of science fiction and children's literature; and thirdly, (3) Lewis, the popular writer and broadcaster of Christian apologetics. The amazing thing, Barfield notes, is that those who may have known of Lewis in any single role may not have known that he performed in the other two. In a varied and comprehensive writing career, Lewis carved out a sterling reputation as a scholar, a novelist, and a theologian for three very different audiences.

Lewis emerged during the World War II years as a religious broadcaster who became famous as "the apostle to skeptics," in Britain and abroad, especially in the United States. His wartime radio essays defending and explaining the Christian faith comforted the fearful and wounded, and were eventually collected and published in America as Mere Christianity in 1952.

I like this quote: "In the Christian story, God descends to reascend. He comes down...down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him."

Lewis took time to write his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, published in 1955. He died of prostate cancer on the day that President Kennedy was shot and killed in Texas.

More at Into the Wardrobe web site and the C. S. Lewis Foundation web site & the Wikipedia file about him.

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(posted about 2004; latest addition 11 May 2008)

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You have just read a very brief example of the powerful, supernatural transformation of a person's life which is possible through the acceptance of Jesus as your savior. Are you tired of life as it now is for you? He will accept you just as you are right this second! Consider accepting Jesus now [check it out]!