Review: A Grief Observed
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is not a doctrinal treatise on death. It’s more of a journal of Lewis’s own wrestle with grief after the death of his wife. You will find some things that are not scripturally correct, e.g. praying for the dead, purgatory, etc. It is full of poignant and thoughtful reflections. He writes that sometimes there is nothing to do with suffering but suffer it. Of sorrow he wrote, “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history…”
Lewis finds himself wrestling with his own heart as much as that that is without him. This book is an opportunity to sit in the house of mourning with one who is wiser than us and Solomon has told us before that this house will do good for your soul. Read it thoughtfully and realize there are some words for the wind here.
