"A Grief Observed": The Closed Door

"Meanwhile, where is God?..go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what
do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After
that silence...Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time
of trouble?" (pgs. 5,6). The preceding quote came from C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, Lewis' honest reflection regarding  life, death, and doubt in God as he mourned his wife's death. Later in the book Lewis had expressed his doubts about God, wondering if He had ever truly cared about His creation or if He is a "Cosmic Sadist" who merely watches our suffering and never intervenes on our behalf. Lewis spent quite some time struggling with the concept that perhaps God isn't Who we think He is. What if, Lewis asks, God isn't good or at least not good in the way we would consider goodness? I am enjoying reading this book because Lewis comtemplates very honestly about several ideas regarding death, the afterlife, and God's goodness as he grieves the passing of his wife. It took  great courage not only to write down these thoughts
but also to publish them. Who would have thought C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist, the man who communicated the idea of a loving God so fluently, would express such honest doubts about the God he served? But Lewis not only expressed such doubts but he also felt them deep in the core of his being. Lewis could have ignored these doubts or pretended they didn't exist. Instead he chose to be honest with himself by writing his true feelings down and to be honest with the world by publishing them. I think that is the greatest test of a Christian-to be honest with God and with others when we are experiencing true feelings of doubt, anger, fear, or sadness over the bad things that occur in our lives. Many Christians believe that to trust God during times of trouble means to suppress these supposedly negative emotions. But in reality trusting God means being completely honest with Him about how we feel and allowing Him to comfort us in the midst of our turmoil.