C. S. Lewis, the great British Christian writer, has another answer in his book The Problem of Pain. Some of you may have seen the Anthony Hopkins’ movie Shadowlands which tells the story of Lewis’s faith and grief at the death of new bride. Lewis married late in life to an American women after they knew she only had a short time to live. One of the greatest speeches in the movie comes from Lewis’s book The Problem of Pain. Anthony Hopkins, portraying Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (p. 93). Later in the book, Lewis writes about how sometimes life’s storms are really God’s spiritual curriculum. Remove the storms and we might never learn the most important lessons of life. He says, I am going through life enjoying everything when suddenly “a stab of pain threatens serious disease or a newspaper headline threatens us all with destruction, sends the whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I’m overwhelmed and all my little happiness looks like broken toys. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys. . . . Thus the terrible necessity of
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