A Year with Aslan: Good but Not Safe

You know, too often I get to feeling “safe” in my relationship with God.  I get comfortable with the idea of God as a friend, a confidant.  When things are going bad, or even with things are going good – God is the friend to go to, the friend who’s always there to listen, to understand.

But – I don’t think that’s what God wants out of a relationship with us.
He doesn’t want us getting comfortable.  He doesn’t want us asking for favors when things aren’t going the way we want, necessarily.  He doesn’t want us getting “used” to things.

Because, God’s NOT a best friend.
He is God of the Universe.  He’s the Creator of humanity, the creator of Heaven and Earth. 

He is so much more than a best friend.

A best friend is someone I confide in when I feel like my parents are getting on my nerves.
A best friend is someone I go to the movies with and then criticize for picking a bad movie.
A best friend is someone who pokes fun at the nerdy things I tend to like, but loves me anyway.

I’m not saying God can’t be that…
well – I don’t know that I’d criticize God for His taste in movies…

but God is sooo much more than that.

Yes, God wants to be invited into your life – to share in those “best friend” moments.  God wants input on what you’re wearing, or how good/bad your day has been.
Don’t ever think God doesn’t care…

But don’t get too comfortable, either.

“I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver, “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?  who said anything about safe?  ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you.”

A Year with Aslan: Day 22 – Minding Our Own Business

To be honest, as much as I’m loving my daily Narnian readings, I have more to say about my reading out of James tonight – and who know…maybe I”ll find a connection between the two…

But tonight’s reading speaks about taming the tongue, or minding what comes out of the mouth, that the tongue is the fiercest weapon our body weilds…capable of bringing people to their knees. 
And I’m all for controlling what I say…because God knows I need to sometimes.  What comes out of our mouths…the words we say are a direct reflection of what’s going on in our hearts…and sometimes that freaks me out…especially when I find myself biting my tongue in anger.  Because I know what I’m thinking…and just because the words don’t come out…the thought is still there…and I don’t like the person I am when those thoughts are there.

But what about the person I am when I keep certain thoughts to myself…knowing they could cause pain if said out loud…but knowing it may be doing more harm if kept quiet?
For so long I’ve witnessed the downward spiral that seems to be my brother’s life…his way of making decisions….or not making decisions.  And it hurts to watch.  I see a relationship that needs mending…a marriage that isn’t…a sibling relationship I wish could be…
and I’m afraid to speak my mind. 
I’m afraid of what will come out – I’m more afraid, I guess, of what may come out of my brother’s mouth.  Because, while I can control mine…I can’t control his…

In tonight’s passage of Narnia – Professor Kirk advises the older siblings to mind their own business.   And maybe it’s good advice.  Maybe it’s best if I don’t stick my nose into the business of others…my brother’s business…and let him fall on his own.  Because they way he seems to be going…I honestly have to wonder how much help I can be.

I know James is talking more about minding the words of anger, hatred, and contempt that may come from the mouth.  And…those I have to work on.   I can’t imagine what God may be thinking when I’m driving sometimes, singing along with a worship song only to stop mid-chorus to yell at the driver in front of me to move a little faster…  Or when I’m frustrated with the dogs when they bark…or the cat when he gets into things…or when my routine is broken even the slightest…
My heart’s not always a pretty picture.

But, I wonder what James would say about speaking the truth…as ugly as it may be.  I wonder what Professor Kirk would say…
Because despite the words that come out, they’re not meant to cause pain, but to promote healing – and that’s got to be a good thing, right?

A Year with Aslan: Day 21 – How Do You Know It’s Not True?

Lucy never deviates from her story about finding Narnia, regardless of what her siblings think.

The thing about Lucy in this story, and I know I’m sounding more and more like a broken record, but Lucy – throughout the Chronicles of Narnia – lives out what she believes.  Her loyalty to Aslan…her faith in Aslan bleeds into her life outside of Narnia, what little insight we get into that life.

James calls all believers to put their faith into action. 

James 2: 14-17
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

In the same way that faith shouldn’t be without action – good deeds alone isn’t going to get you into Heaven.  So many times, people are commended for the things they do during their lifetime – the charities they work for, the kindness they showed…but it only gets a person so far.

In Lucy, in this scene…in every story…we see a complete character – a girl who puts what she believes into action.  Her faith in Aslan is what keeps her going in Prince Caspian – and her attitude reflecting her faith, allows her to act accordingly to keep her family together.

People know something is real…something is true because of the evidence provided.  The fate of criminals is decided by evidence that they did what they’ve been accused of.  Thomas needed proof that Jesus was who He claimed to be following the resurrection.  People need proof….faith doesn’t always come easily.  So, we know something is real…something is true because of what we see.

Peter and Susan didn’t believe Lucy until the went into Narnia themselves….Edmund too.
The professor believed all along because he’d been to Narnia before.

So, how are people today, Narnia aside, how are people today supposed to truly believe in a Jesus they’ve never seen?
When people of faith live out that faith actively, Jesus CAN be seen.

So, what are YOU doing to be Jesus today?  What are YOU doing to make your faith visible?

A Year with Aslan: Day 12 – A Perfectly Ordinary Wardrobe

So, I’ve been meditating on this passage from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – the part where Lucy returns from her first trip to Narnia, and her brothers and sister don’t believe she’s found a new land – and she makes herself miserable because she’s unwilling to say she’s made it all up.  Of course, knowing she’s really been there…I think anyone in her shoes, would understandably stick to their story.

I think it’s one thing I really like about Lewis’ writing…especially a story like this…a children’s story, as it were.

Lewis has made these characters sooo believable.  He picks up on subtle nuances and brings home each character with such minute detail…it astounds me.
Lucy’s strong willed….faithful.
Edmund is spiteful…just spiteful.
Susan is skeptical…er…logical
Peter is…Peter.

C.S. Lewis has managed to make these characters – and in each one there’s a reflection of someone I know…someone I knew…or someone I wish I could be.
I don’t know how many times I’ve missed out on something because I’ve been too strong-willed to give in…or to enjoy it.  I’ve been too wrapped up in my own unhappiness to realize the good times that could’ve been had.
Lucy sulks, because no one believes her, and manages to sulk her way out of having fun.
But, I think it’s really where we start to get a picture of who Lucy is.  She’s not willing to give up on what she believes to be true.  And Lewis, the master writer, keeps the characterization throughout the series.

The most important part of Lucy’s character comes later, though, when she finally enters Narnia with Peter, Susan, and Edmund.  She doesn’t gloat…she doesn’t nag the others for not believing her…
I mean…who would do that?

I guess really…if I could write like C.S. Lewis…I wouldn’t be writing this blog. (because honestly, I’m feeling more like Julie Powell in Julie and Julia, wondering who really reads my blog…is it worth reading…and why aren’t there more hits/comments on what I DO write…I have stuff to say…and…sometimes…it’s worth reading…)
And…if I were more like Lucy…well…I’d just be a better person…

A Year with Aslan: Day 10 – Picking Sides

“That’s a nasty idea.  Still – a robin, you know.  They’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read.  I’m sure a robin wouldn’t be on the wrong side.”
“If it comes to that, which is the right side?  How do we know that the Fauns are in the right and the Queen (yes, I know we’ve been told she’s a witch) is on the wrong?  We don’t really know anything about either.”
“The Faun saved Lucy.”
“He said he did.  But how do we know?”

There’s a LOT I love about C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and there’s probably just as much (maybe more) that I love about the most recent movie.  I love the idea that, in the movie, the children aren’t quite as easy to follow along right off the bat.

Susan is skeptical – “He’s a beaver! He shouldn’t be saying anything…”
Edmund (quite arguably the most confused of them all) is traitorous – turning over to the Witch’s side only to find he’d chosen wrong in the end…
Peter, while equally brave, is also timid in his first attack of the Secret Police…
Only Lucy really seems to know which side she belongs to.
And I guess, maybe, that’s why I envy Lucy’s character so much.

Lucy never questions or doubts Mr. Tumnus – “You’re the nicest faun I’ve ever met…” she says when she finds him crying after he put her under an enchanted sleep.  And while she’s taken aback at the thought that he was kidnapping her…she’s not any less willing to risk everything to save him from the White Witch.

I wish it were as easy to know right from wrong…the good from the bad here.
Why can’t all the bad guys wear black…all the good guys wear white?  Or better yet…have some kind of alarm system when something hinky is going on…when someone isn’t trustworthy….or something.
It would make it so much easier to know who to trust….to know when you’re being taken advantage of…or when some people are just idiots.

I kind of have an idea that Lucy, is some ways, is a lot like me…trusting of most people she meets.  I mean, had she run into the White Witch before meeting Tumnus…would she have been just as willing to accept the Witch’s story as Edmund had been?  Jadis…the incarnation of evil in Narnia, had plenty of practice deceiving the Narnians (well, some of them) into following her.  Maybe it took a while for the majority of Narnians to fully get the picture of just how evil she was….like it did for Edmund.
Would Lucy have responded in a friendly way to the Witch’s welcome and offer of sweets?

I don’t know…
I know…speaking of my own tendancies…I’m willing to give everyone a chance.  I’m never one to judge a person until I really get a chance to see their heart…their motives…and even in a case where I may not like what I see, I’ll still try to be an influence in some positive way.

I kind of wish life were as simple to figure out as it seems to be in Narnia.  Obviously Narnia isn’t without it’s own trouble…but it seems to be so black and white…so easy to decipher. 
We get so much gray…so many things muddled by blurry lines…
what once was never conceivable or thought to be appropriate (ways of life, language) are now common knowledge and said or practiced by Christians and non-Christians…
I’m not saying it’s right, by any means…but lifestyles and people have chosen to blur the lines on so many issues that kids today are growing up in a world where right and wrong are no longer clear clut. 

And I guess where I’m going with this, now…
What’s the church doing to straigten it all out?
Because, people are confused…the Bible is being taken out of context, is being distorted and meshed to fit agendas…
and it’s got to stop.

A Year with Aslan: Day 5 – Who is Aslan?

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

These past two years, I’ve been waiting for God to come in roaring – to come sweeping in and solve all my problems.  Much like Aslan did at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Obviously…it hasn’t happened that way.  God hasn’t really shown Himself in a way I’ve expected.  Most of the time…I’ve felt like He’s been standing back…maybe even ignoring me.

I think what I’m thinking the most of right now is the first part of Prince Caspian, when Caspian and the Narnians are facing a battle they feel they can’t win.  The Pevensies show up…but Aslan is nowhere to be found.  Peter’s character is so frustrated throughout the majority of the film…trying to prove he can do things on his own…without the help of Aslan.  He is High King, after all.
And I think the part, at least right now, that’s resonating with me the most is when Lucy meets Aslan in the forest and she asks him why he didn’t come roaring in to save them like last time.
“Things never happen the same way twice,” he says.

And I think I have to keep reminding myself of that simple statement.  I think there’s a lot of truth in that simple statement.  Because with everything I go to do, I keep comparing it to the last time something similar happened.  I keep thinking…maybe it’ll be this way, because that’s they way it happened before.
I keep thinking, maybe God will present a job opportunity to me this way…or maybe life will work out that way…because it happened that way last time.

But, as reliable as God is…He’s also unpredictable.  I can’t expect God to act one way…just because it’s how I want it to work out.
I have to remind myself…God’s the one working it out…I can’t do this on my own…and maybe…

maybe God’s been standing back all this time….watching me try to do things on my own…just to get me to this point of realizing I need someone to help me out.
Because, as much as I wish God could just come in and sweep away all my problems…I’d rather Him help me deal with them…because, deep down…I realize it’s the struggles that tend to build me up the most.

A Year with Aslan: Day 4 -A Sense of Wonder

They say Aslan is on the move – perhaps has already landed.

I remember reading this passage for the first time and feeling something sweep over me…almost akin to a mixture of what the Pevensie children feel upon hearing Aslan’s name for the first time – fear, wonder, peace, bravery, excitement.  I think it was a sense of anticipation, more than anything…finally we’re getting to the ruler of Narnia…finally I’m finding out what this is all about…

There was a time when I felt that same something stir inside me when it came to hearing the name of Jesus.  Somewhere along the way, I’ve stopped feeling that sense of wonder, excitement and peace.
Somewhere along the way, it’s just become another name that sometimes gets spoken…but sometime, more often than I’d like to admit, it doesn’t even really get spoken…or even thought of during the day.
And I have to wonder…when did things change?

I can remember writing a blog a few years back about the sense of renewal I felt every Easter…the feeling of waking up and realizing the world was different because of Christ’s sacrafice…that there was something special happening because something special happened.  But, most recently, I remember the blog I wrote just last month about the feeling of loss and emptiness at Christmas time.  And it’s that latter feeling that has plagued me for so long…
I’m afraid I’ve lost that sense of wonder…of excitement and anticipation.
I’ve lost that feeling of adventure in my faith…there’ s a sense of staleness in my relationship with Christ – and it’s frightening.

I want to get back to the place where I speak the name of Jesus with reverence…where simply uttering His name washes a feeling of peace and excitement over me all at the same time.  I want to feel joy and excitement…and freshness in my relationship with Christ.

A Year with Aslan: Day 3 – Into the Wardrobe

I remember taking a quiz on Facebook – I stake my life on those things….

okay…not really – but regardless – the quiz was supposed to tell me about my personality and what character I am from the Chronicles of Narnia.  Imagine my joy when I turned out to be Lucy.

Lucy has always been my favorite character – and really the character I truly hope to be like in my own life.
Lucy has a sense of purity about her…a sense of (as today’s reading points out) curiosity…
but most intriguing, I think, is here sense of adventure and bravery.

Lucy isn’t afraid to hold true to what she knows and believes.  While the youngest of her brothers and sister, she’s the one they turn to the most when it comes to entering Narnia, continuing through Narnia, and ultimately, the one get’s the whole adventure started.

Lucy never doubts.

Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well.  She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree trunks, she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out.  (She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe.)  It seemed to be still daylight there.  “I can always get back if anything goes wrong,” thought Lucy.  She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood toward the other light.  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

One of my two favorite scenes with Lucy comes when she meets Santa Clause and receives her cordial of healing juice and her dagger.  “I think I can be brave enough,” she says as she accepts the small weapon.
And later, in Prince Caspian, when she finally meets Aslan in the forest after not following him the first time she’d seen him.  She tried to explain why she hadn’t followed the first time, and sheepishly spoke, “I wish I could be braver.”
Aslan laughs and tells her, “Any braver and you’d be a lioness.”

Lucy’s sense of adventure, her sense of wonder is something that appeals to me on so many levels.  Her sense of bravery…
And while I had my thoughts put into words earlier…they seem to be failing me now.
I guess, what I’m trying to say…
I long for that same sense of wonder, that same sense of adventure and bravery.

Lucy stakes her whole life on her belief in Narnia, her love for Aslan.  She’s willing – at such a young age – to fight for the Great Lion.  Her courage is only masked by her loyalty and love.

Now, I’m not afraid of adventure.  In fact, quite like Lucy, I long for adventure.  I have a curiosity that drives me to learn, to seek out new challenges…
Granted, you’ll never find me jumping out of a plane with a parachute strapped to my back.  But, I no less long for the rush of adrenaline similarly found in a face-to-face encounter with God.  In so many ways, I feel like my relationship is enhanced through adventure – traveling adventures, learning adventures…anything that stretches me, causes me to go outside my norm. 
I think, too, that God thrives on those moments when I’m challenged…when I’m awake…when I’m alert to the things around me in a new way.  When God sees me taking the risk to break from the group and follow him into the forest…to follow his lead even though no one else can see Him.  God WANTS me to take his lead…
and, like Lucy…I think I can be brave enough…but I always wish I could be braver.

A Year With Aslan: Day 1 – The Creation of Narnia

There seems to be a large number of people, like myself, who never really discovered Narnia until later in life – much later than the typical reader of such tales.  (maybe not a large number…but a fair few, I’m sure).  I was in college, watching the movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, having never really read the story.  Then I was in college again reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for a class – for the second time.  I’ve since moved my way through Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – attempting to read each story in their orignal order prior to their release in theatres.

So, naturally after reading Dawn Treader for the second time, and seeing the movie a couple weeks ago  I’m once again longing for my place in Narnia, to run my hands through Aslan’s mane, to bury my face in his fur and hear his low purr.  The closest I’ve been able to come so far, a wonderful book I found on Amazon – A Year With Aslan – thus the title of this entry (and all entries to follow) – a book containing 365 daily excerpts from the Chronicles of Narnia with questions for reflection.  (Well, there’s that and then there’s the AMAZING poster I got with the image of Aslan from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

And while the timestamp on this post will say January 2nd – my January 1st hasn’t really ended yet…so I don’t think I’m behind…yet.

Naturally, the first reading is an excerpt describing the discovery/creation of Narnia – a land full of light, full of color, full of life.  I can remember first seeing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – seeing Narnia for the first time, like the Pevensies.  I was in awe of the beauty of Narnia – even in Winter the scenery was stunning.  The Great River running in the Eastern Sea… 
But like Mr. Tumnus longs for…Narnia in the Spring was something altogether different and even more beautiful.

Following the Pevensies into Narnia, or even in today’s reading, following Digory into Narnia is like stepping into a place you suddenly just feel at home in.  A place you feel like has always been there…just waiting for you to discover it.  It was always yours.  At least that’s how I imagine Lucy felt the first time she met Mr. Tumnus.
I imagine most would feel more like Susan stepping into a world they’d never known before…skeptical…and a little scared.

But,  the first time I went to Northern Ireland…I was Lucy Pevensie.  I stood in awe of the country, finally realize I was where I needed to be.  I stood in awe on the coastline, staring at the Atlantic, staring at the vast green countryside, talking with the people, building realtionships…I finally felt like…I was home. 

In Northern Ireland I found adventure.  I found myself stretching and growing in ways that only could’ve happened there.  Leaving was the hardest thing I had to do…twice I had to do it – like the Pevensies – not knowing when or if I’d ever get to return.  And it’s like…when I left, a part of me was left behind.  And no matter how long I stayed “back in the real world” I felt like part of me belonged back in Northern Ireland…my Narnia.  I still feel like that…like there will always be something…maybe magic…pulling me back to the place of beauty and wonder.