This is a translation of a scriptural meditation from the Russian book, “Day by Day”. Lewis connection follows:
Scripture: “And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John: 11, 26)
Meditation:
"Yes, Lord, I believe this – I will never die. When my soul is separated from the body, there will be a resemblance of death; but my soul will never be separated from God and there will not be that death from which Christ saved us, freeing us from the vile enemy born of sin. ‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death’ (1Cor: 15, 26). We believe this firmly and unwaveringly, since ‘who will separate us from God’s love’? (Rom: 8, 39)
“We are members of Christ’s body, we belong to Him, we have been conjoined with Him forever, and He will not let us out of His Hand. How can we die if the Spirit of God dwells within us? The life given by God cannot be separated from Him, the Source of Life. Christ Himself is our life, and He became for us from God not only redemption, but righteousness as well (1Cor: 1,30) in order that we, cleansed from sin, should become worthy of that Heavenly Kingdom, where ‘nothing impure will enter it’ (Rev: 21, 27). Gazing at Him, we go forward in the unshakeable conviction that our souls cannot perish. Redeemed by the Holy Blood of Christ, dying in Him to sin, they will come to life in Him for life eternal, for eternal happiness.”
The first Lewis quote that comes to mind about death is from “A Grief Observed”, when he was in such pain after Joy’s death:
“It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter’. There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”
When one is in a great deal of pain, how difficult things can be. But I think that a more comforting thought from Lewis, and more in line with Christianity, is from the essay, “Some Thoughts” (“God in the Dock”, I:17, 7):
“Of all men, we hope most of death; yet nothing will reconcile us to – well, its ‘unnaturalness’. We know that we re not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know Who has defeated it. Because Our Lord is risen we know that on one level it is an enemy already disarmed; but because we know that the natural level also is God’s creation we cannot cease to fight against the death which mars it, as against all those other blemishes upon it, against pain and poverty, barbarism and ignorance. Because we love something else more than this world we love even this world better than those who know no other.”
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)
