Do you believe that God is good and that he has made this world good and your life good?
When Susan hears for the first time that Aslan is a lion, she is afraid to see him. "Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." Mrs Beaver responds... "Safe? Who said anything about being safe?" Mr Beaver would later explain that Aslan is "not a tame lion". "But he is good."
Aslan invades Narnia with a "wild and powerful goodness" (J Rogers). And that is what Narnia - and we - need.
When you look hard at our failures in life, I think underneath them is a fear that God is not good, then he cannot be trusted to manage this life, that he has required too much of us, and that we must take things into out own hands and live our lives from our own resources. And when we do, we fail.
In Narnia, Jadis herself falls to the same temptation, long before Narnia is born. She had been Queen of another world, Charn. She has power, a power called the “Deplorable Word” the word that kills all living things but its speaker… Happy with that power, in Charn, she kills all her subjects, preferring to be Queen over nothing than to be not be Queen over everything. That will be the destiny of Narnia, unless someone intervenes. Next week we will look at Aslan on the move.
In the Narnia Chronicles there are two kinds of people. Everyone gets to decide which one they will be. They are based on two differing worldviews. Everyone gets to decide which one he believes.
Lewis calls one the Magician, he calls the other the Adventurer.
The Magician - is someone who looks at life and decides it is not fair, distrusts the goodness of God, and decides that they must take life into their own hands, and seek the power to bend God’s world to serve their ever narrowing life...
The Adventurer - is someone who looks at life and decides it is more than fair, who sees that God is good, that his world is a gift, and that God can be trusted with my life. The adventurer can yield her life to God's care. Their cry is “Let us take the adventure that Aslan gives to us.” And they do!
The truth is that each of us has both the Magician and the Adventurer in our hearts. Now, with God's help, you have to choose which one you will be.
Tim and I finally saw Narnia this weekend. Thanks for all of your sermons on this wonderful story!
Posted by: Elizabeth Chapman | January 23, 2006 at 09:06 AM