The dark night

Each time I read Letters to Malcolm I am struck by the depth of Lewis' spirituality. Here is a disciple toward the end of his life who has seen the peaks and valleys of the spiritual walk. He is weathered. His views on prayer are unlike most of what you read today. God is not -- contrary to what you often read today -- someone who necessarily wants to give you whatever you want. In fact the deeper we grow in relationship with him the less we might receive. I alluded earlier to Lewis' speculation that God seems to grant less to the mature in faith than to the novitiates in faith. In Letters he talks of how the very act of creation results in separateness and ejection. "Can it be," Lewis asks, "that the more perfect the creature is, the further this separation must as some point be pushed? It is saints, not common people, who experience the 'dark night'". Just turn to Jesus' dark night in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross to understand his point. The perfect creature experiences utter abandonment.
Lewis, of course, writes out of his own dark night of losing his beloved Joy to cancer. When he prayed to God for her healing what he received was the sound of bolting and double-bolting on the other side of the door. Paul prayed three times for the thorn in the flesh to be removed and it wasn't. Is this God's way of revealing his power in our weakness?
Prayer can teach us things we may not want to know about God!