Back to series
August 2017
In October 1949, C.S. Lewis wrote a letter to Dr. Warfield M. Firor, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, who had regularly sent him food parcels during the time of austerity after World War II. In the letter, Lewis confided that, for some days, the subject uppermost in his mind had been “Old Age”:
You are a bit further on the road than I am and will probably smile at a man whose fifty-first birthday is still several weeks ahead starting his meditation de senectute.1 Yet why? The realization must begin sometime. In [two ways] it began much earlier. (1.) With the growing realization that there were a great many things one would never have time to do… (2.) Harder to express … the end of that period when every good, besides being itself, was … [a] promise of much more to come…
What has come lately is much harsher — the arctic wind of the future catching me, so to speak, at a corner. The particular corner was the sharp realization that I shall be compulsorily ‘retired’ in 1959, and the infernal nuisance (to put it no higher) of patching up some new sort of life somewhere…You will not suppose I am putting these things as lamentations… They are merely the data. (Add, of course, among them, the probable loss of friends…). And, as usual the result of all this (would you agree?) is almost entirely good.
Have you ever thought what it would be like if (all other things remaining as they are) old age and death had been made optional? All other things remaining: i.e. it would still be true that our real destiny was elsewhere, that we have no abiding city here and no true happiness, but the un-hitching from this life was left to be accomplished by our own will as an act of obedience & faith. I suppose the percentage of di-ers would be about the same as the percentage of Trappists is now.
I am therefore (with some help from the weather and rheumatism!) trying to profit by this new realization of my mortality. To begin to die, to loosen a few of the tentacles which the octopus-world has fastened on one. But of course it is continuings, not beginnings, that are the point. A good night’s sleep, a sunny morning, a success with my next book — any of these will, I know, alter the whole thing. Which alteration, by the bye, being in reality a relapse from partial waking into the old stupor, would nevertheless be regarded by most people as a return to health from a ‘morbid’ mood!
Well, it’s certainly not that. But it is a very partial waking. One ought not to need the gloomy moments of life for beginning detachment, nor be re-intangled by the bright ones. One ought to be able to enjoy the bright ones to the full and at that very same moment have the perfect readiness to leave them, confident that what calls one away is better.2
Whatever our age, it may be helpful to ponder Lewis’s suggestion that we “ought to be able to enjoy the bright [moments of life] to the full and at that very same moment have the perfect readiness to leave them, confident that what calls one away is better.”
“But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God
is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”
HEBREWS 11:16 (ESV)
1 “on old age”; an allusion to Cicero’s work of that name.
2 The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. II, Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931-1949, edited by Walter Hooper, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004, pp. 985-987
COPYRIGHT: This publication is published by C.S. Lewis Institute; 8001 Braddock Road, Suite 301; Springfield, VA 22151. Portions of the publication may be reproduced for noncommercial, local church or ministry use without prior permission. Electronic copies of the PDF files may be duplicated and transmitted via e-mail for personal and church use. Articles may not be modified without prior written permission of the Institute. For questions, contact the Institute: 703.914.5602 or email us.
-
Recent Podcasts
The Emergence of Evangelical Discipleship
by Aimee Riegert, Tom Schwanda on July 11, 2025Evangelical Discipleship: What can we learn from the...Read More
-
Reasoning Requires Faith – Jeffrey Geibel’s Story
by Jeffrey Geibel on July 4, 2025
-
Fix Your Eyes Upon Jesus
by Steven Garber, Aimee Riegert on June 27, 2025
-
Recent Publications
Are Miracles Possible
by Christopher L. Reese on June 1, 2025The 21st century has provoked many conversations and...Read More
-
Is God Just, Not Fair?
by Jennifer Rothschild on May 15, 2025
-
Seeking Dietrich Bonhoeffer
by Joseph A. Kohm on April 29, 2025
0
All Booked
0.00
All Booked
0.00
All Booked
24720
The Adventure of Joining God in His Work Live Online Small Group 7:00 PM CT
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/?event=the-adventure-of-joining-god-in-his-work-live-online-small-group-700-pm-ct&event_date=2025-09-16®=1
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr
2025-09-16

Next coming event
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
The Adventure of Joining God in His Work Live Online Small Group 7:00 PM CT
On September 16, 2025 at 7:00 pmSpeakers
C.S. Lewis Institute
Author
Team Members

C.S. Lewis Institute
Author
C.S. Lewis Institute, in the legacy of C.S. Lewis, works to develop wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ who will articulate, defend, share, and live their faith in personal and public life. Founded in 1976 by Dr. James Houston and James R. Hiskey, the Institute provides leading teachers who address important issues of the day from the perspective of Biblical orthodoxy, while also providing discipleship for individuals in small groups.
