The Circle That Gave Us Narnia

In 1930s Oxford, a small group of friends began meeting in C.S. Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College on Thursday evenings. They called themselves the Inklings. J.R.R. Tolkien would read aloud from his sprawling manuscript about hobbits and rings. Lewis would share early chapters of what became The Screwtape Letters and later The Chronicles of Narnia. Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, and others would listen, critique, encourage, and argue late into the night.

Tolkien later admitted he nearly abandoned The Lord of the Rings multiple times during its seventeen-year writing. Without Lewis's persistent encouragement, he said, he would never have finished it. And Lewis himself credited Tolkien's friendship as the influence that helped draw him from atheism to faith. Neither man could have become who he was alone.

The writer of Hebrews understood something the Inklings lived out: "Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together" (Hebrews 10:24-25).

Community is not just about comfort. It is about calling. The Inklings did not merely socialize — they drew out of each other gifts that might have stayed buried forever. The people the Almighty places around you are not there by accident. They are there to call out what He has already placed within you. Whose gifts are you stirring up?