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Posts Tagged ‘Aslan’

Prince Caspian struck me in another way.  In a world trying to live without God, the story points out the vanity of any battle.  If God did not intend the effort, then why are you fighting?  And if you are fighting without Him, is there hope of success?  Can there be success when you have no aim?  In the movie asked the war council comprised of Prince Caspian and his council: a black dwarf, a red dwarf, the badger; and of Peter, Edmund, and Susan – “Who are you doing this for?” 
 
The black dwarf a little later suggested to Prince Caspian that they seek supernatural help – but not from Aslan.  Like Abraham trying to fulfill God’s promise for Him, Prince Caspian nearly took matters into his own hands by giving them to the White Witch’s.  “You can’t do this alone,” she coaxed the prince and then the high king from her icy prison. 
 
Were there only two options?  Was Peter forced to decide between losing to Miraz when no help would come, or surrendering to the White Witch?  Was it so hard to wait for Aslan?  My favorite scene of the movie is Peter leaning back against the broken stone table in Aslan’s Howe, gazing at the sculpture of Aslan carved against the wall behind the broken ice curtain in which Peter had been tempted by the White Witch hours before.  He is deep in humble thought, feeling the weight of his mistakes and rebellion.  I know what it is to fear getting up again, because you’ve let yourself fall so many times.  I know what it is to only wish to see the face of my Lord. 
 
How do you follow in a world without answers?  What is this faith that demands you choose when you don’t even know all the options?  Is it fair to ask us to wait on what we are not sure will come?  Why is losing sometimes the plan? 
 
Peter’s story is different from ours in two important ways: First, Peter had seen Aslan, long ago, and witnessed his power firsthand.  Secondly, Peter did not have any written instructions to guide him, but we have the Bible.  Prince Caspian had neither benefit and so, as Jesus told Thomas, was more blessed for believing truth he had not seen. 
 
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
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(read after Part 1)
 
If God sent undeniably fantastic events and figures upon the world, what would we do?  After we had reconciled ourselves to a new world completely different from that we’d imagined, would our lives be better or worse?  In Narnia (spoiler warnings, but these books have been out for fifty years, so I don’t feel sorry for you) after Aslan was back and the dryads and nyads were dancing about with the fauns, badgers, giants, mice, bears, and chipmunks, there was a celebration.   Flowers bloomed.  Telmarines joined the festival, freer than they had ever been for seeing the world as it truly was. 
 
I imagine that, even if it were in a catastrophic form of judgment that God reasserted the reality of things outside our world able to pierce through, there would be a revival of saving faith.  There would be joy and wonder and courage.  Even if the awakening is slower and more gradual, even if it is happening to the unsaved as much as to the believer and a mass of the world reembraces paganism in a revolt against naturalism, GK Chesterton points out that the last things the pagans did is convert to Christianity.  That was their climax.  CS Lewis hints at that, but I think he sees paganism as something to be fulfilled, or seen without human’s taint.  The revelry at the end of Prince Caspian is a pagan one redeemed because it is governed by, and centered around Aslan. 
 
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn

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