Going Home

“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” — from 2 Timothy 4

Jack and Joy had three happy years together. Joy made the old house at the Kilns bright and cosy again. They went to Ireland, and Jack showed her the hills he had loved as a boy. Then the cancer came back. In the spring of 1960 they went on a trip to Greece, a place Jack had read about all his life. A few months later, on 13 July 1960, Joy died, with Jack beside her.

Jack was full of grief. He wrote down his sad feelings in notebooks, honestly, even his hardest questions for God. Slowly, he found peace again. Later the notebooks became a little book, A Grief Observed, which has helped many sad people to know they are not alone. Jack also looked after Joy’s two sons, David and Douglas, and gave them a home at the Kilns in the holidays.

Soon Jack himself grew ill. In 1963 he became so ill that he was not expected to live. But he woke up and asked for a cup of tea! He was not afraid of dying. He and Warnie spent quiet weeks together, reading, doing crosswords and remembering when they were boys.

On 22 November 1963, a week before his sixty-fifth birthday, Jack died at home at the Kilns. He was buried in the churchyard at Holy Trinity. Ten years later, Warnie was buried in the same grave. The brothers who had made up Boxen together were together again.

Today, millions of people have read Jack’s books. Children still walk through the wardrobe into Narnia and meet Aslan, and some of them later meet Jesus in the Bible and know him.

Jack ran away from God for many years. But God found him, and Jack kept the faith to the end, through happy days and very sad ones. God holds on to everyone who trusts him, and he will hold on to you.

Dear God, thank you for C. S. Lewis and the stories you gave him to tell. Help me to trust you on happy days and sad days, and to keep the faith all my life. Amen.