The Promise Keeper

Share Now

Yesterday our Wednesday morning Bible class was back in session after Christmas. As always happens, one comment led to another and we ended up far from where we started.

One lady mentioned that there was a time when a person’s word meant something. I immediately had a story to tell to illustrate her point. Just the other day Ray and I were talking about someone who is a powerful illustration of a person who kept his word. His name was C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis.

Lewis is perhaps best known these days for his Chronicles of Narnia series for children (and adults, too, truth be known). In mid-twentieth century England, Lewis was a scholar in English language and Tudor literature at Magdalen College at Oxford University, and a brilliant defender and proclaimer of Christian truths, who wrote numerous books in addition to the Chronicles of Narnia. Many have become Christian classics.

Before Lewis was a brilliant defender and proclaimer of Christian truths, he was an atheist. While he was an atheist, he was a soldier in World War I. Before he was a soldier in World War I, he was a student at Oxford and before that the student of a tutor and before that a student in traditional English boarding schools and before that a little boy in Northern Ireland whose mother and a governess taught him at home.

“Jack” (the name he gave himself when he was three years old and kept the rest of his life) loved to read his family’s many books and play with his brother Warnie in their great rambling house on the outskirts of Belfast.

While Jack was a little boy in Northern Ireland, his mother died of cancer. It left an awful scar, but that scar and others he would suffer later helped C. S. Lewis become the sensitive and powerful encourager through words that he became.

Lewis loved language and stories. Books were at the center of his life. Reading George MacDonald and G. K. Chesteron helped him to believe in God again. Friendship and conversation with fellow writers who called themselves the Inklings — J. R. R. Tolkien in particular — helped him believe in Jesus again.

Lewis was a servant. He gave away much of the money he earned writing his successful books. During World War II, he was a member of the Home Guard, walking the streets of Oxford at night on the lookout for Germans. Also during the war, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) asked him to lecture on the radio about the Christian faith. Of course, he agreed. These lectures later became Mere Christianity.

While Lewis was volunteering, giving money away, teaching, and writing his more than thirty books which have now sold over 100 million copies, he was also keeping a promise.

When Jack Lewis was in training for World War I, he made a friend, Paddy Moore. Lewis and Moore promised one another that if one of them died, the other one would take care of his friend’s parent (whether that be Lewis’ father or Moore’s mother). Moore did die in the war, and Lewis kept his promise. From 1919 until 1951, C. S. Lewis cared for the mother of a friend he had only known a short time. For thirty-two years, he kept his word.

Jack Lewis got out of the army, set up a home, and took care of Mrs. Moore and her twelve-year-old daughter, too, until the daughter married. When Mrs. Moore later went to a nursing home, Jack visited her every day.

Every morning he got up and kept his promise . . .

. . . and every night he did the same. He did it when it was hard and I would say that he did it when it was easy, but I’ve never heard anything about this ever being easy for Lewis. The impression I’ve gotten is that it was always pretty difficult.

You keep promises every morning and every night, too. Whether you said it out loud or not, you made a promise when you became a mama. You made a promise to do what you have to do — when it’s easy and when it’s hard. Aren’t we thankful that God is that kind of promise keeper to us?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,
for He who promised is faithful.
Hebrews 10:23

Share Now