# “Joy is the serious business of Heaven” by C.S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2009/11/24/joy-is-the-serious-business-of-heaven-by-c-s-lewis/
- Published: 2009-11-24T17:26:49-06:00
- Author: tollelege

“I do _not_ think that the life of Heaven bears any analogy to play or dance in 
respect of frivolity. I do think that while we are in this ‘valley of tears,’ cursed
with labour, hemmed round with necessities, tripped up with frustrations, doomed
to perpetual plannings, puzzlings, and anxieties, certain qualities that must belong
to the celestial condition have no chance to get through, can project no image of
themselves, except in activities which, for us here and now, are frivolous.

For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in itself, indeed
The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be the complete reconciliation of boundless
freedom with order–with the most delicately adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful
order?

How can you find any image of this in the ‘serious’ activities either of our natural
or of our (present) spiritual life? Either in our precarious and heart-broken affections
or in the Way which is always, in some degree, a _via crucis_?

No, Malcolm. It is only in our ‘hours-off,’ only in our moments of permitted festivity,
that we find an analogy. Dance and game _are _frivolous, unimportant down here; 
for ‘down here’ is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment’s rest from 
the life we were place here to live.

But in this world everything is upside down. That which , if it could be prolonged
here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of
ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

–C.S. Lewis, _[Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062565478?tag=toletaupanre-20)_(
San Diego: Harvest, 1964), 92-93.

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