A thought that begins with a book club and ends in tears.

It was my first book club experience.  Normally if I talk about a book that I’m reading, extolling the wonders of the written word, people’s eyes glaze over - it’s a very one sided conversation. Not so at book club, sitting on squashy leather sofas in a café in Belfast, waitress on hand to supply tea, coffee, and caramel squares, whatever a book club attendee may require for his or her comfort.

A typed plot synopsis with character analysis is fully acceptable here. A discussion of Marsh-wiggles, Giants and Green Witches is completely normal and no-one’s eyes glaze over with boredom and disinterest.

C S Lewis’s sixth book of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair was September’s choice. I re-read most of it before I went along to Canteen Book Club that evening and finished it off the following weekend. This time around I was struck by a different part of the book than before. The final chapter, ‘The healing of harms’ contains these words,

‘And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond.’

Lewis never avoided the difficult stuff of life in his story telling. He didn’t patronise his young readers by passing over elements of a story that might be upsetting for them.

Eustace and Jill are deeply saddened by what has happened in the story. Caspian has aged and now lies dead on a stream bed ‘with the water flowing over him like liquid glass,’

‘…and the music so despairing…a tune to break your heart.’

 So they cry and Aslan stands next to them, crying too.

Those great Lion-tears are more meaningful, more precious and more valuable than the purest, most exquisitely cut diamond. If that diamond were the size of the whole Earth, it couldn’t be more precious than those tears.

‘Jesus wept.’ John 11:35

 They weep together over their loss, over the pain, over the things that should not be. They weep because it hurts… because the sadness hurts so much, and then Aslan tells Eustace to drive a thorn into his paw.

‘And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all the redness that you have ever seen or imagined.’

The blood and water of the King flow mingled together and heal the harms.

‘One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out.’  John 19:34

A world obsessed by science, that wishes to disprove the existence of God with cold, hard logic and through objective rationalisation, doesn’t know God who weeps for his ravaged world, who weeps for everything and everyone in it. There can be no systematic arrangement of such emotion.

I think God’s emotional capacity is such that where our joy is like primrose yellow in spring, his joy is brighter and stronger than solar yellow at the height of summer. Where our sadness is a painful heart shaped bruise of vivid purple and blue, his sadness is a dark, deep haemorrhage of the heart that envelops all the hurt we’ve ever felt or ever will feel.

‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ says God in Isaiah 40:1

It is a comforting thing to see the eyes of a friend well up in sympathy, as you share your anxieties, worries, fears, and sadness. To know that they care and empathise, that they feel what you feel.

To know that Jesus weeps as we weep, that every tear is more precious than a diamond, is deeply comforting.

 ‘Behold your God.’ Isaiah 40:9