Some of you are familiar with the slight fascination I have with the Chronicles of Narnia. Slight as in I’ve read them all somewhere around 7 times! I think the original love stemmed from the fact that my dad read them to me when I was little. I had bad asthma as a kid (completely grew out of it, praise the Lord!) and he’d wake me up at midnight every night for a treatment, and would read to me. Always the Chronicles of Narnia. When we finished them, we’d just start over again =). It was a joy to me to understand them more and more as I grew up, and of course I’m pretty excited they’re getting so much attention now!
I want to share one of my favorite passages from the first book that helps me in thinking about the love between us and God:
Just after Susan and Lucy discover Aslan alive:
“’Oh children, I feel my strength coming back to me. Children catch me if you can!’ He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. And then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the table, laughing. Though she didn’t know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again, and a mad chase began. Round and round the hilltop he led them. Now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in their air, with his huge and beautifully velvety paws and catching them again. And now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy, laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia. And whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm, or playing with a kitten, Lucy could never make up her mind.”
Charles Williams (one of C.S. Lewis’ closest friends) said, “We expect [Aslan] to display majesty, exaltation, power, and perhaps joy. But surely, a noble, high minded joy, not a romp.” Our expectations can be so far from the truth, so warped by culture that we miss, overlook, or undermine wonderful aspects of his personality such as playfulness and companionship.
C.S. Lewis wrote in an essay on the Chronicles of Narnia, “I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past certain inhibitions, which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God, or about the sufferings of Christ. I thought the chief reason was one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings, and reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency. Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”
In a sermon, Pastor Tim Lucas states that “Aslan is the very picture of love. He showers the children with warm affection. He protects them, he rescues them, he fights for them, teaches them, weeps with them, plays with them, kisses them, laughs with them, and even dies for them.” What a beautiful picture of our relationship with God. Playing with our Creator, while still beholding His holiness. Yep, I should do more of that.
