Becoming less dragon-ish
When I was about 10 or 11 years old, my uncle gave us kids the complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I had never heard of them before, but was immediately hooked, and quickly devoured all seven volumes. It remains probably the single best gift that I remember receiving as a child. The stories Lewis tells have been read and re-read by me, many times.
A portion of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has been hovering about my mind lately–the one about Eustace, a disagreeable, nasty young boy, going through the process of being turned back into a boy, after having been a dragon. If you haven’t read it yet, I’ll try not to spoil all of it for you (or maybe I have already, in which case I say, there’s so much more to the book, and for that matter, the series, that I haven’t spoiled it at all. So get a copy from the library or a friend or a bookstore and start reading it. Seriously. As soon as you finish reading this, or maybe before.)
Eustace tries in vain to scratch off his dragon-skin, but he finds that once he sheds it, he has yet another dragon skin underneath. He tries again, and again, but to no avail. No matter how many times he tries to scratch it off and remove his dragon hide, he is unable to completely remove it himself.
“Then the lion said–but I don’t know if it spoke–’You will have to let me undress you.” I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know–if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but is such fun to see it coming away….Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off–just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt–and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.”
And thus began a new sort of Eustace. As Lewis writes, “It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that “from that time forth Eustace was a different boy.” To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.”
When God peels back our knobby, dragon-y skin, it hurts. Maybe worse than we have ever felt. A tear goes deep into our hearts. But it is then that the cure can begin. It is there where hope renews, where we feel like, now, the light has begun to shine in a dark place, and while things may not be all “fixed” and healed completely, the renewal process has begun.
But it only happens as we lie still and humble, waiting for his merciful claws, to dig down deep, and tear the dragon-ish thoughts and actions from our hearts, leaving us small, and soft, and ready to yield to his will.
ah! no kidding, we watched this movie this weekend and this was one of the most meaningful scenes for me…such neat timing that you would post about it! thank you for sharing your thoughts, and love that you point out how we need to be still to allow it to happen. we need to let. it. happen.
needed this post….thank you
Merciful claws…..there are merciful and yet we want to run from the pain.
This is taken from “The Valley Of Vision”:
Holy Lord,
I thank thee for thy wisdom and thy love,
for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject,
For sometimes putting me into the furnace
to refine my gold and remove my dross.
No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin.
If thou shouldst give me choice to live
in pleasure and keep my sins,
or have them burnt away with trial,
give me sanctified affliction.
i know mom read these books to me when i was little, but i’ve forgotten so much! going to re-read…thanks for posting!