A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph

In May, as spring arrives, Van is still at work on the Illumination of the Past, and the exercise has forced him into spending his time thinking about two major topics: the relationship between time and eternity and the reality of God’s mercy. Attempting to contemplate the reality of God and Davy’s continued existence in the afterlife, Van speculates that Davy must now be separated from time in a way that he was not. He begins to see time as an obstacle that must be contended with and that the human sense of time gives a glimpse into the reality of eternity and eternal life.

As a result of this line of thinking, Van starts to see the truth of the human desire for God as something implanted within everyone and that partial glimpses of real joy and beauty in the world are just the soul’s desire for the ultimate truth and beauty of God. He relates: “I came to wonder whether all objects that men and women set their hearts upon, even the darkest and most obsessive desires, do not begin as intimations of joy from the sole spring of joy, God” (208). All these thoughts he also writes about to Lewis, with whom he continues to correspond in the days after Davy’s death.