This quote will not be new to my audience. I share it here simply out of joyful admiration. This is the kind of writing I aspire to. I don’t think I have the natural chops for great fiction, nor the aesthetic sensibility for real poetry. But Lewis’s devastating—even poetic—ability to uncover some lost or deeply hidden pearl of wisdom and to give it exactly the right expression in words and images…is unmatched as far as I can tell. (And I could’ve used any one of a hundred other examples to show it.)

I don’t know how exactly someone like Lewis became able to bless others with words in this way, but I’d like to become—and/or help others become— someone who can follow in his footsteps. Of course, if the Lord has other plans, I will thank him nonetheless for the Lewis’s of the world. I imagine such mastery comes at no small cost to them, and perhaps I should be just as glad to dodge that bullet if it doesn’t come to me.