This is the fireplace in Joy’s room and no doubt a place where she and C.S. Lewis spent many nights talking before her death on July 13, 1960. Lewis married Joy Gresham in December 1956, The Times ran the following announcement: “A marriage has taken place between Professor C. S. Lewis, of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and Mrs. Joy Gresham, now a patient in the Churchill Hospital, Oxford. It is requested that no letters be sent.”

I was thinking about and praying for a friend this morning who is facing a heart-breaking loss. I don’t think there is much “human” sense that is gained from pain and suffering. But what we do gain is the ability to have a greater faith and trust in the One Person who knows us perfectly and loves us unconditionally

Amy Carmichael wrote, “Settle this in your mind so you will not have to settle it again: There is no promise of ease for any soldier on any field. Search the New Testament; you will not find one such promise. It is made quite clear that things are not going to be made easy. So to be surprised and troubled when they are difficult is foolish, and unreasonable. Why is there so much inward stress, sometimes sharp trial or . . . tribulation? We are not told; but we are told that there will be this sort of thing, and that it is ‘not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.’”

Okay, I confess that when I was in my 20′s I was a huge fan of Robert Frost. And while this is not a “yellow wood,” I could not help but recall his poem, “The Road Not Taken.” It played a small role in my decision to do what I am doing today. Isaiah 6:8, however, played a far greater one.

Still, who can resist these words: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth . . . . Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” —Robert Frost

Here is a front porch that beckons you to step up on it and as the Southerners say, “Sit a while.” Friends at Black Gum Hill invited us to come up for the long weekend, and we were more than happy to accept their invitation. Thank you, dear friends!