C.S. Lewis’s “Awakening” Letter (1957)

On October 20, 1957, English apologist C.S. Lewis wrote privately, “It’ll be nice when we all wake up from this life, which has indeed something like a nightmare about it.” The remark did not come from a man flirting with despair, but from one who had looked steadily at suffering and refused to call it final. Writing from England in the long shadow of two world wars and personal losses, Lewis gave voice to a Christian realism: life can feel disorienting, painful, and haunted by grief—yet it is not the last chapter.

Lewis the Fellow Pilgrim

Lewis was widely known for defending the faith with clear reason in works such as Mere Christianity and for awakening moral imagination through The Chronicles of Narnia. He lectured at Oxford and lived much of his life in quiet rhythms of study, correspondence, and hospitality. His “nightmare” language is striking precisely because it comes from a man often read as confident and composed. Here he speaks not as a distant scholar but as a brother on the road, acknowledging weariness while pointing beyond it.

His heroism was not the glamour of headlines but the steadiness of duty: intellectual courage to speak plainly in a skeptical age, and spiritual courage to keep trusting when answers were not tidy. Such faith is marked by humility—admitting the ache of the present—while refusing to surrender hope.

Death as Awakening and the Joy Set Before Us

Lewis’s image of “waking up” aligns with the New Testament’s insistence that death is not the believer’s defeat but a doorway into the Lord’s presence, awaiting the resurrection of the body. “We are confident, then, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). This hope does not minimize tears; it gives them meaning and a horizon.

For the Christian, endurance is strengthened by a settled center: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Lewis’s line encourages weary hearts to practice patient courage, love in ordinary places, and steady prayer—remembering that the darkest night is not the end of the story, and that waking will be wonderful because Christ will be there.