by David Melton
I am a Narnian at heart. If you’ve never read C.S. Lewis’s books, read them — you will do yourself a huge favor. I have read all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia at least once a year for as long as I can remember. It moves my soul.
Literary critics make a fuss over the Chronicles. I think it is documented that J. R. R. Tolkien, an important friend and academic colleague of C. S. Lewis, hated the whole Narnia series. Some Boston students and I sat in “The Eagle and the Child” in Oxford, in the exact room where those two Christian giants squabbled about it (and as I sit writing this, I look at the autographed menu students gave me that day as a souvenir of that study trip — great memory!). But it’s not the literary genre that draws me to Narnia. It’s Aslan. That great and mighty lion is a picture of the Lord Jesus that bounds into my heart and mind every time I re-read the stories. He is certainly not tame, but is just as certainly good. And when Aslan is near, nothing can be the same. Then, betrayal, selfishness, greed, and bitterness threaten Narnia to its core. The King of the Land, the true King, Aslan, has that awful choice to make if Narnia is to avoid destruction.
Payment for sin is too awful for words. I feel so much like Lucy, the little child who crumbles under the horrific consequences of sin and cannot understand all that happens because of it. It can only begin to be revealed at sunrise. Easter changes everything. It isn’t fiction or fantasy that our Savior walked out of the tomb, and that truth is the defining tenet of the Christian’s hope. A Lion and some children might help you, like me, feel it all afresh and anew.