The Soul of C. S. Lewis

Over the past few months, I’ve been using one particular book as a devotional. I was intrigued by the concept when I first read about it and hoped it would live up to its promise. It has.

If you are looking for a thought-provoking book to help you focus on Christian spirituality, I recommend you try The Soul of C. S. Lewis: A Meditative Journey through Twenty-Six of His Best-Loved Writings.

All of Lewis’s classics are represented here: each book in the Chronicles of Narnia series; his space trilogy; his autobiography, Surprised by Joy; his “devilish” work, The Screwtape Letters; other fanciful offerings such as The Great Divorce, The Pilgrim’s Regress, and Till We Have Faces; one of his best apologetic essays, The Abolition of Man; what I consider to be one of the most insightful sermons of all time, “The Weight of Glory”; and the poignant A Grief Observed, which reveals how Lewis dealt with the the death of his wife.

The editors also include some lesser-known works that normally might have a more restricted, scholarly audience, yet they draw worthy lessons from these as well, applicable to anyone, scholar or not.

Sections are titled “Pilgrimage,” “Temptation and Triumph,” “Going Deeper,” and “Words of Grace.” Within each section are six chapters, each with an introduction and ten separate meditations from a specific book. Each meditation begins with a quote from the work and ends with an applicable scriptural passage.

The next two days I want to take a break from political commentary and provide instead samples from this worthwhile volume. I hope you find the excerpts edifying.