C.S. Lewis: Pictures

Welcome to Lent.

You are reading a devotional I am writing this year and releasing next year in book form, if the Lord wills. Yes, the header photo is part of a Van Gogh painting which may appear on the cover. You will have to wait to see it. This book will be called "Forty and Seven: A Lenten Guidebook for God's Church."

I chose this title as most people do not even know that Lent has forty fasting days and seven feast days. The seventh seven or seventh feast day is Easter. That makes Easter Monday the day of Jubilee when we celebrate life after Lent as the resurrection changes everything. Enjoy!

Fasting Day 1 of 40 | Ash Wednesday

C.S. Lewis writes, “All my seven Narnian books, and my three science-fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures. They all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, “Let’s try to make a story about it.” At first, I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the Lion came from or why He came. But once He was there, He pulled the whole story together and soon He pulled the other six Narnian stories in after Him.”

Bruce L. Edwards in “Patches of Godlight”: C.S. Lewis as Imaginative Writer in C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy in 4 volumes (London: Bloomsbury, 2007).

I start this devotional with two sets pictures in my head: the scenes that forty or seven appear in Scriptures and in the lives of saints. Joshua was forty when he gave his report from the Promised Land. C.S. Lewis was forty when he penned the Chronicles of Narnia. Both helped people see what others could not see. Only as they reported and wrote, did God (or Aslan) show up and shape their future as wholehearted followers.

Invite someone to journey through Lent with you. Be shaped together.