"I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me...I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn't that kind of fear. I wasn't afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it - if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn't any good because it told me to follow it...
"The lion told me I must undress first...I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins...So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there next to me looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling...
"I looked down and saw that [my feet] were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one...So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully...
"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off?...
"Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I had ever felt...
"Well, he pulled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me..."
C. S. Lewis - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Pg 84-86
I know this quote is pretty lengthy, but I think this is one of the best and simplest descriptions of the way God works that I have ever read. I have been reading the Chronicles of Narnia this summer, and there are some gems in all the books I have read so far. But I think this has to be one of my favourite passages. It just captures so perfectly the way we think we are fixing ourselves, the realisation that we simply cannot, the initial hurt as God works through our brokenness, and the final moment when you realise that you are clean in Him, and the humility that brings. Gah.
No comments:
Post a Comment