Recently I’ve been making my way through C.S. Lewis’ last written book, “Chiefly on Prayer: Letters to Malcolm”. The book consists a series of imaginary letters to someone called Malcolm and, as the name suggests, the letters are “chiefly on prayer”.

In these letters, he had been discussing with Malcolm why or how we should pray petitions. Malcolm’s child was not at all well and it led him to ask, as many of us do: does God hear our petitions? And if they are heard, are they answered?

In his response, Lewis offers this gem:

“I sometimes wonder if we have even begun to understand what is involved in the very concept of creation. If God will create, He will make something to be, and yet to be not Himself. To be created is, in some sense to be ejected or separated. Can it be that the more perfect the creature is, the further this separation must at some point be pushed? It is saints, not common people, who experience the ‘dark night’. It is men and angels, not beasts, who rebel. Inanimate matter sleeps in the bosom of the Father.”

Perhaps we could say, this happens to the umpteenth degree in Jesus. In talking about Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, Lewis says:

“The ‘hiddenness’ of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to Him, and therefore God Himself, made man, will of all men be by God most forsaken?”

It isn’t an answer to our suffering. It doesn’t solve the hard times. But there is comfort in the idea that in the moment we feel farthest from God, God is actually closest of all.

Perhaps we could push further and say, this is why the way of suffering is also the way of life. The way of the cross is also the way of the resurrection. The way of service is also the way of joy.