C.S. Lewis on the gift of joy

#1017 for broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 4 Jan 2015

As the New Year settles in, allow me to share some words from author and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis, found recently in a letter he wrote to a “Mrs Ellis.” The letter was discovered folded inside a second-hand copy of one of Lewis’s books, The Problem of Pain.

Lewis tells Mrs Ellis that “everything is going well,” but he equates this feeling with the “illusion of security.” Then he says:

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony. It jumps under one’s ribs and tickles down one’s back and makes one forget meals and keeps one (delightedly) sleepless o’ nights. It shocks one awake when the other puts one to sleep. My private table is one second of joy is worth 12 hours of pleasure.

May each of us find traces of joy, this beautiful God-given gift, amid all the experiences we encounter in 2015.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.