Sometimes treasures are hidden in books on pages that have no number. Such is the case with C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Prior to page one, there is a note to Lewis’s god-daughter, Lucy. Lewis writes, “I wrote this story for you, but … you are already too old for fairy tales … but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
I was able read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when fairy tales were still very real to me, when my friend Danny and I saw no waste in practicing sword-fighting with sticks in the back yard … just in case… just in case we opened our closet doors to Narnia one day.
The Narnia books shaped who I am as a reader and writer. They also shaped my faith. It is Aslan himself who tells the children in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader “that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” There as in home, our world. That was how it worked for me. Aslan enriched my understanding of Jesus and God.
But, as Lewis said to his god-daughter, at some point we can’t help but grow older and fairy tales cease to hold the meaning they once did in our lives.
Fortunately, I had another book, a story that would help me hold onto that little piece of childhood, a book first read to me in those in-between years, those middle school years when we struggle at the cusp of puberty with what we can hold onto from our childhood and what we must let go of.
That book is called The Polar Express.
I was thirteen when my teachers herded the 8th grade into the cafeteria and Mr. McCumiskey read to us Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express.
The Polar Express is the story of a boy who has stopped believing in Santa Claus, but one Christmas Eve is whisked away on a fantastical journey to the North Pole. There he meets Santa and is given a bell from the harness of one of Santa’s reindeer.
The bell turns out to be very special.
Only those who still believe can hear it ringing.
As the boy grows older, his friends and his sister all lose the ability to hear the bell, but not the boy. Even as an adult, he can still hear it ring.
At thirteen, I understood this to be a very important thing … that there were some things of childhood to let go of and there were some things, like God, to hold onto even tighter than before. Because the older we get, the harder it is to believe, especially when adult sensibilities like reason and logic get in the way.
Children believe in things with their whole hearts. They don’t stop to question. They invest themselves in the plight of others without stopping to consider.
That’s what adults do—they consider.
Over the past few days, I’ve watched the children at Vacation Bible School invest themselves in the story of Joseph.
For the little ones, when they meet Joseph, they don’t see the actor who portrays him (David from church), they see Joseph … in jail … in the Pharaoh’s palace and they fear for him and they rejoice with him and their emotions are utterly real.
And I miss that—I miss that once upon a time, I was able to embrace that wholly—that completely.
So, I pick up my fairy tales. I reread The Chronicles of Narnia and The Polar Express and I remind myself that you’re never too old to believe with the heart of a child.
