Learning to Think Deeply About God in the Middle of Life
There are seasons in life when the mind begins to slow down and look more carefully at the deeper things.
Not because everything is suddenly calm.
Not because all of life’s questions have been answered.
But because something inside you begins to hunger for understanding in a deeper way than before.
That is the season I find myself in right now.
For much of my life, faith was something deeply personal. It was something I clung to in moments of pain, moments of fear, moments when life felt as though it could collapse beneath the weight of circumstances. Faith was not theoretical for me. It was survival. It was the quiet anchor that kept me steady when everything else felt unstable.
But over time, something else began to grow alongside that faith.
A desire to understand.
Not simply to believe that God is real, but to think deeply about who He is. To explore the theology behind the truths that had already become real in my life through experience.
That desire has led me into a season of deeper study.
At the moment I am working my way through Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, a book that has already begun stretching my thinking in ways I did not expect.
Systematic theology is not light reading.
It asks you to slow down. To think carefully. To consider how the many truths of Scripture fit together into a coherent understanding of God, salvation, the church, and the Christian life.
It forces you to ask questions you may have never stopped to ask before.
Who is God in His nature?
How does salvation actually work?
What does Scripture teach about suffering, holiness, prayer, and the work of the Holy Spirit?
These are not questions that can be answered quickly.
They require patience.
They require humility.
And most of all, they require a willingness to sit with mystery where certainty cannot fully reach.
Yet even as I walk through this more structured and doctrinal exploration of faith, I feel another voice calling my attention in a different direction.
Tomorrow I will begin reading A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
For many people, Lewis is known for The Chronicles of Narnia, stories that have shaped the imaginations of generations. But Lewis was also one of the most thoughtful Christian writers of the twentieth century. His ability to wrestle honestly with questions about God, suffering, and the human condition has influenced countless believers over the years.
I have been drawn to Lewis’s work ever since my own conversion to Christ.
There is something about the way he thinks and writes that resonates deeply with me.
Lewis had a remarkable ability to combine intellectual clarity with emotional honesty. He did not approach faith as a simple set of answers to life’s problems. Instead, he approached it as a journey of discovery, one that required both the mind and the heart.
Over the years I have read several of his books.
Each one left its own mark on the way I think about God and the world.
But one book of his has always lingered in the background of my mind.
A Grief Observed.
It is a deeply personal book, written after the death of Lewis’s wife, Joy. In its pages, Lewis wrestles openly with grief, doubt, anger, and the strange silence that can sometimes seem to follow tragedy.
It is not a polished theological treatise.
It is not a carefully constructed argument.
It is a journal of grief.
A record of a man trying to understand where God is when the heart is broken.
For years I have wanted to read it slowly and carefully, allowing its reflections to sink deeper than the surface level of casual reading.
But for one reason or another, the timing never quite seemed right.
Life was busy.
Other books took priority.
Responsibilities pulled my attention elsewhere.
And so the deep dive I had always intended to take into Lewis’s reflections on suffering never quite happened.
Until now.
There is something about the current season of my life that makes this moment feel different.
Perhaps it is the fact that I have been writing more openly about suffering, trauma, and faith in my own life.
Perhaps it is the season of pressure I described recently — the sense of being in a press where God seems to be shaping something beneath the surface.
Perhaps it is simply the quiet sense that the time has come to engage more deeply with these questions.
Whatever the reason, I cannot help but feel that the timing is not accidental.
I believe it is God’s timing.
There are moments when certain books find us exactly when we need them.
Not because they contain magical answers.
But because they help us think, pray, and reflect in ways we were not yet ready for before.
I suspect that A Grief Observed may be one of those books for me.
Suffering has been a recurring teacher in my life.
From the physical challenges I was born with, to the many surgeries that followed, to the trauma and struggles that have shaped my story, pain has often been part of the landscape.
There were seasons when that suffering felt confusing.
There were seasons when it felt overwhelming.
And there were seasons when it forced me to confront questions about God that could not be ignored.
Why does suffering exist?
Why does God allow it?
What purpose could possibly come from the crushing weight of trauma or loss?
These are not new questions.
Believers have wrestled with them for centuries.
Even Scripture itself contains the echoes of these struggles.
The book of Job is essentially an extended meditation on suffering and the mystery of God’s sovereignty.
The Psalms are filled with cries of lament from people who love God yet find themselves surrounded by pain.
And in the New Testament, we see Jesus Himself entering into the deepest suffering imaginable through the cross.
The Christian faith has never promised a life free from suffering.
What it offers instead is something far more profound.
The presence of God in the middle of it.
That truth has become deeply personal to me.
When I was eighteen years old and contracted meningococcal disease, slipping into a coma while doctors were uncertain whether I would survive, I encountered something that forever changed my understanding of life and death.
I encountered the presence of Jesus Christ.
That moment marked the beginning of a journey that continues to unfold even now.
A journey of faith.
A journey of healing.
A journey of learning how God can take the broken pieces of a human life and slowly transform them into something meaningful.
It is that same journey that has led me to write my memoir Kissed by Death, and later my devotional book Refined by Fire: Finding God in the Furnace of Trauma.
Both of those books emerged from the same place.
From the press.
From the places where suffering forced deeper questions about God and the meaning of life.
In many ways, Lewis walked through a similar press when he lost his wife.
A Grief Observed is the record of that experience.
What makes the book so powerful is that Lewis does not hide his struggles.
He does not pretend that grief feels neat or spiritually tidy.
Instead, he writes honestly about the confusion, anger, and silence that can follow loss.
And yet, even within that honesty, there remains a thread of faith.
A stubborn refusal to let suffering have the final word.
That is the tension I expect to encounter as I begin reading the book tomorrow.
The tension between grief and faith.
Between questions and trust.
Between darkness and the quiet persistence of hope.
I do not expect easy answers.
In fact, I suspect the book will raise more questions than it resolves.
But sometimes the most valuable books are not the ones that solve our problems.
They are the ones that help us sit with them more faithfully.
For me, reading Lewis now feels like stepping into a conversation that began long before my own life and will continue long after it.
A conversation about suffering.
About God.
About what it means to believe when the world feels broken.
I plan to read the book slowly.
Carefully.
Prayerfully.
Not rushing through it, but allowing the words to settle in my mind and heart.
Because the goal is not simply to finish another book.
The goal is to grow.
To deepen my understanding of God.
To strengthen the foundation of my faith as I continue walking the path that seems to be unfolding before me — a path that includes writing, ministry, and sharing the story of what God has done in my life.
Sometimes growth happens through joyful seasons.
But often it happens through the press.
And perhaps that is why Lewis’s reflections on grief feel so relevant right now.
Because they remind us that faith is not about avoiding suffering.
It is about learning to walk with God through it.
Tomorrow I will open the first page of A Grief Observed.
Not as a casual reader.
But as someone who understands, at least in part, the landscape Lewis is describing.
Someone who has also walked through fire.
Someone who is still learning what it means to trust God in the middle of life’s hardest moments.
And perhaps, through that process, God will reveal something new.
Not just about suffering.
But about Himself.
And sometimes, that is the most important discovery of all.
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