They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. . . The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven. . .
The character of George Macdonald to the dreamer in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, p. 67.
An innocent question from my daughter about other fiction that C.S. Lewis has written (she has read That Hideous Strength four times) brought me to read The Great Divorce for the first time. Though I question some of his imagery in this story, we know that God will, indeed, change sorrow into something else entirely:
Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
(Jeremiah 31:13 ESV)
The Works of God 
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