A Boy Called Jack

“Teach children the way they should go, and when they are old they will not turn away from it.” — from Proverbs 22

On 29 November 1898, a baby boy was born in Belfast, a busy city of shipyards in the north of Ireland. His parents named him Clive Staples Lewis. His father, Albert, was a lawyer who loved books and long words. His mother, Flora, was quiet and funny, and very clever. She had gone to university and studied mathematics, at a time when hardly any women did.

Clive had a big brother called Warren, or Warnie, who was three years older. When Clive was still very small, he decided he did not like his name. He wanted to be called Jacksie, after a dog that lived nearby! He would not answer to anything else until his family gave in. Soon Jacksie became Jack, and Jack he stayed for the rest of his life.

Jack and Warnie were best friends. One day Warnie brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin, covered with moss and twigs and flowers, like a tiny garden. Jack thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It gave him a strange, sweet longing, a feeling of wanting something he could not name. That feeling came back to him again and again all his life.

Together the brothers made up a whole pretend world called Boxen. Jack’s part was Animal-Land, full of animals in clothes and knights in armour.

When Jack was six, the family moved to a big new house called Little Lea. It had long corridors and attics, and there were books in almost every room. On rainy afternoons Jack explored the house and read and read. Nobody ever told him a book was not for him.

Jack’s parents took him to church and taught him to pray. For a long time it looked as if he had forgotten all of it. But God had not forgotten Jack. The things we learn about God when we are small are like seeds. God knows how to make them grow, even many years later.

Dear God, thank you for my family and for everything I am learning about you. Please make those little seeds grow in me. Amen.