C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy

I read this marvelous book many years ago. For some reason I picked it up again for my early-morning reading. What an incredible book. This is the story of Lewis’s childhood and early adult years. It is the story of adult formation, spiritual formation, intellectual formation. It is all about homelife, school, reading, going to college, becoming a professor at Oxford, and, of course, the remarkable encounter with Joy–all in the hands of a consummate storyteller. I am struck with how much reading shapes his life. That’s true for me too. But I am profoundly struck with how Lewis comes to the certainty of faith, up against the grain of emerging secular, skeptical culture. This is a story of what it means to be finally and fully convinced that the Christian story tells the truth about our lives. I love this book.