BibleDriven

Life-shapers

Biographies—good biographies (or perhaps I should say biographies of good people)—are always heartening, motivating, and edifying. I’ve recently been reading (slowly, for effect) Alan Jacobs’s good work entitled The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis. It’s one of those books … a page or two (sometimes a paragraph or two) and then lots to think about.

This morning I read where Owen Barfield was introduced into Jack Lewis’s life. World War I had just ended and both were back at Oxford, where they met through a common friend (Leo Baker), when each was about twenty-one years old. Owen Barfield “would become one of the most important people in Jack’s life” (90). In fact, Jacobs concludes, “it is Barfield, and Barfield alone, without whom we could not imagine C. S. Lewis as we now know him” (91).

That set me to thinking. We’ve all known some one or two or so folks like this in our own lives—life-shapers for good! I c an think of, oh, m

aybe a handful of friends, some formal and some informal teachers, who have had a life-shaping impact on me for good. My shortcomings and failures are no reflection on them, but much of what is good in my life has some direct connections to their having been in my life. Friends like these are great mercies of God.

Think a little today of those who’ve had such an impact in your own life, and thank the Father of every good and perfect gift for their faithful and fruitful friendship.