Growth In God Through Grief By C. S. Lewis

He is having a hard time staying true to his faith while going through such pain. Before the Holocaust, he only saw God as a forgiving and merciful God. He said to himself, “How could I say to Him: Blessed be thou, Almight, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces” (67). He does not realize God can be a harsh and challenging God as well.

How do you allow God to take control of your life and entrust that everything will be okay? This was the type of question author Anne Lamott (2006) baffled with in these next few chapters. Lamott (2006) shares her personal life story of entrusting God in her book Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. This paper will provide a summary of chapters two thru four, combined with a personal reflection, and conclude with a few desired questions that ideally could be answered by Lamott.

In the movie he remains strong, logical, and vigilant while still battling for his wife’s forgiveness. Every time Day-Lewis is on screen, viewers can empathize with the emotion and anguish of John

The author's experiences during the holocaust weaken his faith in God and ultimately leads to an act of rebellion against Him. As a young child, the author had a strong desire to learn about God, His ways, and how He influences mankind. However, life in the camp begins to make the author question his faith. “Some of the

His struggles became particularly evident when he witnessed the hanging of the pipel, what he saw that day rattled his faith to its core. Subsequently, he felt abandoned by his God, “What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery?”(p.66), “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him?” (p.67). Furthermore, he wondered why God would allow such suffering and remained silent in the face of evil.

He witnesses the pain and death in his town and feels unable to do anything about it. His spiritual crisis is typical of those who experience such catastrophic situations as they try to reconcile their trust in a loving God with the existence of such great

If I was in his shoe’s I’d say, "Christmas was the day I received a gift I’ll never forget in my life." John Lewis point Is that receiving that gift changed him from an early age. Receiving the Bible made him want to become a preacher at just the age of 4, it became his

And if God is God, why is He letting us suffer?” (1) The lifelong quest for answers to these questions shaped his theology

His inability to move on highlights the lasting impact of loss and the profound effect it has on one's life

At first, his journey on the surface of the stream went relatively easily, but then “the current grew swifter. Great flakes or islands of foam came swirling down towards me, bruising my shins” (Lewis 45). People often face difficulty when they search for God. However, C.S. Lewis also writes, “I had to scramble to shore. But as the banks hereabouts consisted of great flat stones, I continued my journey without much hurt to my feet.”

¶“A man may think God sleeps, but God sees everything, I know it now. I beg you, sir, I beg you—see her what she is . . . She thinks to dance with me on my wife 's grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat.

Wiesel isn’t thankful for God being silent and feels nothing but anger towards him. To sum up, loss of faith is another theme in Night that shows

He goes on to parallel his own altercations with his father, Lewis

However, at the point he was worried about his own life, nothing mattered to him, when the little girl walked up to him, there was no compassion in him. He was enclosed in his own thought; the presence of the girl brought him back to the world and made him conscious of the world around him. He began to have a different meaning to life. His conscience could not stop thinking about the little girl that he said “It seemed to me that I could not die now without having settled something first” he felt the need to look for the girl because she had saved him from killing himself.

“The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it. The great secret of the spiritual life, the life of the Beloved Sons and daughters of God, is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realization of our humanity” Henri