As I’ve had a lot more time lately I decided that I wanted to start reading more often, but I needed to find something easy that I could easily get into and really enjoy at this point. I came back to my favorites, The Chronicles of Narnia, written by C.S. Lewis. I read them long ago as a kid, and a few years back I read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to kids that I had at camp, they were entranced. Reading further into the series, I must say, I think I am too.
These books have been drastically altering my picture of the Christian walk, and that of God himself. They take my walk with Christ out of the normal context. They take away the obligation of following God and give me desire. Instead of a stale experience going to church and talking about God, they challenge me to see life as a battle. A fight between good and evil, a battle of epic proportions. When the Christian walk is put in this context, I believe it makes a lot more sense. The story is not about us, yet we get to take part in it.
Aslan is the God-figure in the books, an enormous lion who is a ferocious as he is good. (“Safe? ‘course he isn’t safe… but he’s good”) Something strikes me about this picture of God. He is someone who I want to follow, someone who I am willing to fight for. He puts skin and bones to a figure who was hard to envision before. He is a dangerous foe, he is wise, he is compassionate, he is mysterious, but never impersonal. (“He comes and goes as he pleases…”) He puts emotion where had trouble seeing it before.
What this says about me I’m not exactly sure… I need to read children’s books in order to understand God? Well, something like that, I guess I can’t deny it. I wish I could read the Bible this way and see God and my walk as C.S. Lewis did, but I thank him that he put down his thoughts for us to read in story form. I think God likes stories, there is something epic about God himself. He’s just asking us to play a part in the story.