Through the Wardrobe

Of the four Pevensie children who make their way through the wardrobe into Narnia, it is Susan whose life ends tragically. It’s not that she dies, but she doesn’t return to Narnia with her siblings years later. She never makes it to Aslan’s country.

The other three children we can identify with. We want to be Peter, brave to a fault, ready to rush in to any situation regardless of the risk. We give thanks for Edmund, the redeemed traitor because we know we have all been Edmund. And we love Lucy because she is always faithful.

But Susan we abandon. She’s vain for starters. And then she commits the ultimate sin. She turns her back on Narnia. She grows up too fast. So we abandon her. We follow Lucy, Peter and Edmund into Aslan’s country and we never give Susan another moment’s thought.

There’s a problem with doing that though, because out of all the Pevensie children, we are most like Susan.

Think about this for a moment. What does it take to walk through the wardrobe? What does it take to embrace Narnia? The first thing we must do is believe in magical things. We have to believe in white witches and talking animals. We have to believe in fauns who want to have tea with us and beavers who will risk everything to get us to the Stone Table.

Those are the stories of children you say. We’re not meant to believe in those things.

Really? How about this? In order to believe in Narnia you have to believe in an all powerful, omniscient being who will sacrifice his life to save others. We have to believe in resurrection. We have to believe that death is not the end. We have to believe in prayer. We have to believe in miracles. We have to believe in stars that fall to earth and become human.

Do you see what Jesus meant when he said we must be like little children?

Every time we pray, every time we worship, every time we take a leap of faith, we are walking through those wardrobe doors and agreeing to believe in a world beyond our understanding. We’re agreeing to live in a world that is sometimes frightening and confusing, but also amazing and beautiful and surprising.

More often than not we’re afraid to do that. We become Susan because it is easier to only believe in things we can touch and see.

It is easier.

But if we had a choice, if we sat down and really looked at our options, who would we choose to be, Susan or faithful Lucy? Because we all know that Susan was never happy. And we all know that Lucy was the happiest of all even when she had no idea what would happen next.

Losing Heart

In one of her sermons, Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of her granddaughter’s seventh birthday. As her granddaughter, Madeline, watches her candles burn, her family encourages her to make a wish.

Why? Madeline wants to know. Every year she makes a wish and it never comes true, so why keep wishing?

When I first read that story, my first thought was that seven was a very young age to become jaded with the world. Usually that happens around thirteen and peaks sometime around our quarter-life crisis in our mid-twenties. But seven? That’s early.

Taylor’s concern was that her granddaughter’s lack of faith in the power of wishing would turn into a lack of faith in the power of prayer. Because, like wishes, prayers are not always answered in the way we hope.

I can think of many unanswered prayers and wishes in my life. I’ve forgotten more than I can remember, but to the scooter I wanted in sixth grade—I’m still bitter I didn’t get you. And closet door, I’m still angry that no matter how many times I opened you, you didn’t lead to Narnia.

Other prayers were answered—just not in the time frame I would have preferred. It took eleven years for God to answer one of my prayers and during that time, I prayed almost nightly. And I didn’t pray for something I wanted, I prayed for something I needed and when the prayer wasn’t answered right away I kept on praying.

Why?

Because it was a prayer that had to be answered. To live a life where it wasn’t would have been unbearable.

And then I still have prayers I’m waiting on. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, I’m sure you can name two. Yes, I’m still waiting for the miracle that will fix my air conditioner (I’m going to start living in the bedroom with the portable air and wait for summer to be over) and yes I’m still waiting for the miracle that will send me to seminary fulltime.

These days, I pray so much for fulltime seminary that I sometimes worry my head will explode. It is an agonizing wait. Not being able to fulfill my call in the way I need is like waiting at the airport for a loved one you haven’t seen in a while. You search the crowds. You watch the clock. And then you finally see them and you want desperately to run to them and give them a bone crushing hug, but you’re stopped by security, or by more crowds or by whatever—joy is delayed.

It’s horrible. And I wonder sometimes if God will ever answer my prayer.

But Barbara Brown Taylor says something interesting about whether prayer works. She says that one day she will tell her granddaughter this, “It [prayer] keeps our hearts chasing after God’s heart. It’s how we bother God, and it’s how God bothers us back.”

So here’s what I know—I don’t know when, if ever, I will get to seminary fulltime, but I do know that as long as I keep praying about it, as long as I keep on God about it, then I am headed in the right direction. As long as I am praying, I have my eyes set on the right thing.

Named

Her name is Melody Pond.

She was kidnapped as a child and brainwashed to believe she was created for the sole purpose of murdering a man she has never met, a man known only as the doctor.

In this latest episode of Doctor Who, she finally meets him in the flesh, relishing her chance to fulfill her life’s purpose. She is a self-proclaimed psychopath. Her dance with the doctor as she tries to kill him is a perverse flirtation. Her method of murder –poison lipstick.

She kills him with a kiss.

For a moment, she is the happiest she has ever been. But something is wrong. The doctor is dying slowly and he is ruining her moment by continually calling out to another woman, River Song, a woman whom he clearly loves.

Who is this River Song? Melody demands to know.

But the doctor won’t tell her. Instead he whispers a message to her that only she can hear, a message he wants her to deliver to River when she meets her.

Who is this woman? Melody asks the doctor’s companions.

And so they show her.

She is River Song.

Melody Pond is River Song. And due to his time traveling capabilities, the doctor has known her virtually her whole life. He knew her as a baby. He will one day be there when she dies. He knows that she was a murderer and he knows that one day she will be a hero.

Struck by the doctor’s faith in her, a confused Melody manages to take that one huge step in becoming River Song. Using the last of her regenerative powers (this is science fiction remember) she heals the doctor and brings him back from the dead.

It is the power of a name.

Jesus knew the power of a name. In the gospels, he calls people by name. He even gives them new names. He knows everything about everyone. He knows who they were. He knows who they will be. He knows who they are. And they are all things at once to him.

When Jesus first meets Peter, Peter’s name is Simon and he is a fisherman. What do you think Jesus saw when he first looked at Peter? Did he see the fisherman? Did he see his rock? Did he see the man who would deny knowing him three times? Did he see the man who would one day be known as the first pope?

Or did he see all of these things at once?

Can you imagine, for a second, what that must feel like, if you’re Peter, or if you’re Melody Pond? You’re leading your ordinary run of the mill life. You think you know all that you ever need to know about anything. You know exactly how your life will go. And then someone looks at you and that someone knows who you are and the wonderful things you will do one day.

Could you meet that stare?

Could you hold that gaze?

And then, as if the stare weren’t enough, that person changes your name forever and sets you on your journey.

I’ve had brief flashes of that kind of thing several times in my life.

No name changes, but moments when someone has said my name, like Sister Julie at communion when I was little, and I have felt that in that second, that person knew everything there was to ever know about me. They could see my future—and it was something beautiful.

Look for those moments. Let God name you.

It is a powerful thing.

Get Out!

It was Elaine’s catchphrase on Seinfeld.

Someone would say something shocking and Elaine would wind-up and then throw both arms out, hands striking the chest of the person in front of her.

“Get out!” she would say, completely and totally amazed.

There was this little metaphorical Elaine living inside my head yesterday at my orientation at Asbury, representing that part of me that is still shocked to be living this life, not even one year after being confirmed, not even a year and a half since finding Hope.

On one hand, seminary is exactly like every other school I’ve ever attended. There were warnings about plagiarism and working hard. There was talk of money and insurance.

There was mention of walking to the parking lot at night in groups of two or more, which made me think about all the dark alleys I walked down when I was in college up in Ohio. I’m pretty sure God had an army of angels following my stupid self around those nights.

It was all the same.

And then in striking and amazing ways, it was completely different. It began in worship. Orientation began with breakfast and then worship. And worship began with a faculty member telling us how they had been praying for us for weeks, by name.

People, strangers no less, praying for me, still amazes me, especially because I am such a strong believer in the power of prayer.

Worship continued and when it was time for communion I went up and my faculty advisor handed me the bread and said, “Kendra, this is the body of Christ.” And then as I dipped my bread in the grape juice, another faculty member said, “Kendra, the blood of Christ.”

What got me in that whole exchange—was the use of my name. It took me back to when I was little and Sister Julie used to give me communion and address me by name. There is something in the power of a name. It makes everything more real, more intimate, more present, more now.

And by the time I made it back to my seat, I found those familiar tears welling up in my eyes as the praise band sang.

I was sitting there quietly, but all I wanted to do was jump up and do cartwheels (which I have never been able to do so that would have been a miracle in and of itself). I wanted to dance. I wanted to sing. I wanted to make a complete fool of myself. I wanted to be obnoxious in my joy.

I thought about Jesus calling the first disciples, how they dropped everything, left their families and their lives and followed him.

And I think now, how if someone had told me I could pull out a sleeping bag and sleep there in the chapel at Asbury every night and attend classes all day long, I would do it.

I would do it because that is what I want so much right now. I want to be able to attend seminary fulltime. I want to be immersed and not have to come up for air.

And if someone were to offer me a way to do that today, I might just give my inner Elaine free reign and slap that someone on the chest.

And say, “Get out!”

Superman

And some days you get the two for one special ...

In the movie, The Iron Giant, a boy named Hogarth befriends a giant metal man, an iron giant almost 100 feet tall. Who is this giant? Where did he come from? Why is the government after him? Is he dangerous? These are the central mysteries of the story.

Throughout the movie, Hogarth spends a lot of time teaching the giant what it means to be human. When the two explore the woods and find a deer recently shot by hunters, Hogarth demands that the giant show respect to the fallen animal and then makes the pronouncement, “Guns kill.”

Guns kill.

It turns out to be massively important because the giant is himself a gun. He is a weapon. Though we never find out who made him, it becomes clear as the movie progresses that he was designed for one purpose—destruction.

And when the government finally finds him and attacks him, he becomes a slave to his design and turns into a massive death ray.

It is at this point, though, that Hogarth steps directly in the giant’s line of sight and implores the giant to reconsider who he is.

“You are who you choose to be,” Hogarth tells him.

The giant stares at the boy and realizes what he was about to do and he rewrites his programming.

“I am not a gun,” he says.

But the story does not end there. A paranoid government agent launches a nuclear weapon at the giant, not realizing that because the giant is standing in the middle of the town, the bomb will destroy the giant and every person in the town.

Knowing the bomb is fixed on him, the giant makes another decision. He says goodbye to Hogarth and launches himself into space. He races to meet the nuclear bomb head on. And as he does he hears Hogarth’s voice.

“You are who you choose to be.”

At the last second, the giant closes his eyes and whispers, “Superman.”

The bomb hits the giant and both bomb and giant explode.

I’ve seen this movie probably twenty-five times and I cry every time.

I cry because the giant closes his eyes before he crashes into the bomb. He’s afraid and yet still does the right thing.

I cry because he chooses to be Superman. I cry because this metal man shows more humanity than most of the human characters in the movie.

I cry because he chooses to be a hero.

In her sermon today, Pastor Debbie spoke about identity. The gospel reading included the passage where Jesus asks the disciples who people say he is. And then he asks Peter who he thinks he is and Peter says simply, “The Messiah.”

Pastor Debbie took that a step further to talk about our own sense of identity. Who are we? And what she said reminded me so much of the iron giant. I don’t have a copy of her sermon so I’m going to have to paraphrase, but I believe she said, “We are not what we do. We are who God calls us to be.”

We may think we know who we are. We get up every morning, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, do the laundry, pay the bills, feed the cat, go to church.

But we are so much more in God’s eyes.

On a personal level, it was a relief to hear Pastor Debbie’s words.

I’ve been really struggling over the past few weeks with who I am. I know I’m called to the priesthood, but because of the circumstances in my life, I’m not able to embrace that call (in this case by going to seminary fulltime) the way I would like.

I find myself frequently bitter and angry at anything that keeps me from that call.

It’s been making me miserable quite frankly.

But the other day Pastor Debbie told me something that she would echo a few days later in her sermon. Again I’m paraphrasing, but basically she said that even though I wasn’t in seminary fulltime, it didn’t mean I wasn’t 100% committed to the call.

In other words, going to seminary only part time, for now, doesn’t take anything away from who I am or what God intends for me. It doesn’t take away anything from the call. In God’s eyes, I am, I have been and I will always be what He has intended me to be.

Someone built the iron giant to be a gun. He was made to be a gun. People treated him as if he were dangerous. And for a brief second, he believed what society told him he was. It took a little boy to help him realize who he had been called to be, a hero.

We can’t let our day-to-day lives dictate who we are. We can’t let ourselves be defined by the person we curse at on the highway, by the project we turn in late at work, by the extra hours we put in each day, by the spam we receive in our inbox, by the people we sometimes let down.

We aren’t perfect.

But we are something, something wonderful, in God’s eyes and we need to always strive for that.

My Turn in the Ant Pile

A few years ago, the young daughter of a friend of mine found herself sitting in an ant pile during a break in soccer practice.

As her mother brushed the ants off of her, the young girl, remembering that her brother had problems with ants the day before, looked up at her mom and said, “It was my turn in the ant pile.”

What an amazing and interesting view of suffering!

She didn’t cry over the ants. She didn’t say “why me?” Instead she acknowledged that suffering is something that happens to everyone.

No one is immune.

Last year, I went to the zoo with some friends and their children. I was walking with a little boy who was probably two years old at the time. While we were walking, he tripped and fell. He stood up and immediately looked at me as if asking, “Did that hurt? Should I cry?”

He wasn’t bleeding and no arms or legs looked bent in wrong directions, so I mimed brushing myself off and I said to him, “You’re good. Just brush yourself off.”

He copied me and then a moment later was back walking down the path, the fall forgotten.

Isn’t unfortunate that we all must grow up, that we can’t stay children forever?

Life is sometimes a hard and unjust teacher. And at some point we lose the innocence that allows children to move quickly past their pain.

Life experiences train our bodies to respond to stress with a flood of adrenaline that can hijack our brain, beat up our bodies from the inside out and sometimes leave us feeling incapacitated.

We lose weight. We gain weight. We sleep too little. We sleep too much.

We cry. We ache. And time and time again find it virtually impossible to move on.

It’s why I love the sometimes wild and explosive language of the psalms.

Psalm 124:4-5 says, “Then would the waters have overwhelmed us and the torrent gone over us; then would the raging waters have gone right over us.”

How many times has life seemed like a raging flood? How many times have we felt caught up in something beyond our control?

What do we do?

Psalm 122:6 says, “Pray for … peace.”

This past Friday night was a rough one for me as I suddenly realized (metaphorically speaking) that what I thought was a nice leisurely cruise down a quiet river was something else entirely. The current was picking up and I could hear what sounded like the Niagara Falls of all waterfalls just ahead.

All this time, I had thought I had some control over my life, but now I was realizing that I had no control whatsoever and the more I tried to fight for control, the more out of control I felt. I was Peter walking on the water and then losing sight of God. I had made the mistake of thinking I could do things on my own. I had made the mistake of not trusting God even in the stormiest of seas, even in the most raging waters.

Peace followed Saturday morning.

I went out to the church to try something new. That has been the theme of my life these past eighteen months—newness.

And the new thing I was trying—fly fishing.

Nikki was leaving later that day for seminary, but came out to the church to spend some time with and teach a few adventurous souls who wanted to learn how to fly fish.

I have never enjoyed fishing. When I was a child, I thought I might like to fish and so sat out on the dock behind my grandparent’s trailer with a stick and a piece of string, but by the time I was a teenager, I would still go out on the boat with my dad, but I was more likely to be holding a book than a fishing rod.

Fly fishing is as different from regular fishing as cross country skiing is from downhill skiing. Fly fishing requires quite a bit of finesse.

And finesse has never been something I have excelled at. There were moments though, yesterday, when I would snap my wrist back and wait for the line to uncurl behind me before whipping it back out again when I could feel—I didn’t have to guess—I could feel the tug of the line and know that it was ready.

Done correctly, the fishing line will lay out on the water in a perfect straight line. Mine was mostly curly cues when we practiced on land.

But once we got out to the water, Nikki showed me the roll cast where you let the line dip behind you a bit so that the rod and the line form the letter “D” and then you cast the line out a bit side-armed.

Voila! I had it. It would still take me doing the cast twice to get the fly all the way out, but I could do it and there was a certain peace in casting, in the repetition, in the pleasure of seeing the line out on the water where it was supposed to be.

Nikki came over to check on me once and just as she got to me, I felt something crawling on my leg.

I looked down and low and behold I was standing in an ant pile and ants were crawling all over my sneaker and up my leg.

“Oh no,” Nikki said, her voice rising a bit over concern for me.

“It’s okay,” I said and brushed the ants off.

It was my turn in the ant pile.

And no harm done.

Sometimes the Air Conditioning Doesn't Get Fixed

Last Monday, I sat on the steps outside my condo and watched the storm clouds building to the north. It had been such an awful day that had lightning clawed its way out of the sky and struck me right then, not only would I have not been surprised, I probably would have been thankful.

I had made one last attempt to get my air conditioning fixed before school started. I was pumped up, telling myself that as horrible a situation as it was, God could do anything and He could make this work. The a/c guys showed up early and started digging up the pipe in the yard and we were on our way.

But after a few hours, the work came to a grinding halt. They had dug up the pipe just fine but needed access to it inside the building which meant taking out my downstairs neighbor’s water heater. Here’s what happened next. They couldn’t get the valves to shut off the water to the tank so they had to shut off the water to the building which immediately endeared me to my neighbors, then they couldn’t get the water to drain from the tank, but thought they had drained it enough so went ahead and cut the pipes leading from the water heater to the wall. But when they did that they discovered the water heater wasn’t drained at all and they couldn’t move it. That’s when they told me I needed a plumber.

That’s when I told them to put the pipes back together and fill in the hole in the backyard. I was done.

Only I wasn’t done, because they didn’t put the pipes back together correctly and now the pipes were leaking.

It was an hour or so after that that I found myself out on the steps watching that storm cloud as I waited for the plumber.

And as I sat there thoughts raced through my head. Was this all a test? How come every time I tried to fix the air conditioning, something really horrible (and increasing in horribleness) happened to stop me? Did God need me to prove myself? Had I done something to deserve this?

It was that last question that got me thinking about Job.

Job is the Old Testament poster child for suffering and not just any suffering. In a short amount of time, he loses everything he loves, his possessions, his family, and finally his health. He suffers in a way that few people understand. He suffers not because he has done anything wrong. He suffers because Satan, we are told, is trying to prove a point that Job only praises God because he is blessed. If he suffers, Satan surmises, Job will curse God.

Job is innocent, yet his friends tell him that he must have sinned to have been cursed so. In Job 3:7, Eliphaz tells Job, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?” The righteous, the innocent are blessed. Sinners are cursed.

Job’s friends, of course, are idiots.

In the midst of Job’s suffering, God asks him to pray for his friends. As bad off as Job is, his friends turn out to be the ones most in danger.

The message of Job is that God does not punish us with suffering.

Even the God of the Old Testament who regularly sends the Israelites into battle, who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, does not cause us to suffer.

And if we think that God is responsible for our suffering, if we think we have done something to deserve the bad things that happen to us, then we don’t know God at all.

God does not cause suffering, but He will make use of it.

He can and will use our suffering and turn it into something good and powerful and glorious.

In today’s reading from Genesis, we are coming to the end of Joseph’s story. Joseph, like Job, has suffered horribly. If Job is the poster child for suffering in general, then Joseph is the poster child for anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Let’s review his life.

Joseph, favorite son of Jacob, is leading a pretty good life, pretty carefree. He has a nice coat. He has bizarre dreams sometimes, but they don’t trouble him too much.

Most importantly, Joseph’s completely oblivious that his brothers are jealous of him.

So jealous in fact that they plot to kill him. Joseph’s brother Reuben actually tries to save Joseph by suggesting that instead of killing him, they just throw him into a pit. Reuben then plots to rescue Joseph from the pit later.

Whew, Joseph is saved.

But wait, the other brothers decide to make some money off dear Joseph and so sell him into slavery before Reuben has a chance to save him.

So close.

Ah, but wait, Joseph is sold to Potiphar who is very wealthy and soon puts Joseph in charge of his household. Joseph is still a slave, but leading a good life.

Whew.

But no, Joseph refuses the advances of Potiphar’s wife who then turns around and accuses him of attacking her.

And now Joseph is in prison.

Nothing has gone right for Joseph. Every time things seem to be going his way, an obstacle is thrown into his path to derail him. Even when people try to do right by him, like Reuben and Potiphar, someone else is there to make his life a nightmare.

Joseph has every right to despair.

Meanwhile, God has other plans for Joseph. The story does not end with Joseph languishing in prison. The story ends with Joseph as a leader in Egypt, respected and admired by the Pharaoh himself. Joseph is wealthy and thanks to God and the dreams He gave Joseph, Egypt is weathering a famine far better than her neighbors.

God blesses Joseph and He blesses him in the most unlikely way imaginable.

From prison to a ruler of Egypt, how Joseph’s fortunes changed.

And much like Job who is asked by God to pray for his friends, Joseph also has a chance to do the right thing when he reunites with his family years later. He was in a position to hand out a perfect vengeance, but instead he embraces his family and forgives them saying something I personally hold close to my heart, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”

Whether it be Job or Joseph, God can take the most horrible suffering and turn it around to create the most amazing blessings.

I don’t know what the end of my air conditioning story will be. It’s still not fixed. I need to sell this condo, but can’t if it doesn’t have air. I really don’t know what’s going to happen next.

But last Monday, when the a/c guy told me that they might need a jackhammer to reach the pipe in question, I said to myself, “Wow, when God works His miracle here, it’s going to be something amazing.”

Five Minutes

In Jerry Maguire, Jerry has just lost his job. After trying frantically to save his client list, he succeeds in saving just one, and walks out into the main office a dejected man. The office grows quiet. Everyone stops talking. All that extraneous office noise, the phones, the copy machine, the tap taps on the keyboards, stops.

Jerry looks at everyone, smiles wryly and says, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do what you all think I’m going to do, which is FLIP OUT!”

I’ve been feeling an awful lot like Jerry these days. Fortunately I still have my job, but I do feel sometimes mere seconds from meltdown. That’s what happens when you go nearly a month without air conditioning in the summer in Florida.

But as horrible as the last few weeks have been, they haven’t been the worst weeks of my life. They rank, but they’re not the worst.

Five years ago, I developed vertigo. What began as an initial uncontrollable spin, tapered off into a constant feeling of living on a boat at high seas. I felt like someone in constant motion even when I was sitting still. Like a ship missing a stabilizer, I listed as I walked. Making eye contact with anyone required too much energy. And most disturbingly, I couldn’t read.

I started copying a coping mechanism my poorest readers use in the classroom. I became a fake reader. I stared at the open book and then every few minutes turned the page. But I wasn’t reading a thing.

I lived my life in five minute increments. Just get through the next five minutes. And then when those were through, get through the next five and so on and so on.

Living life five minutes at a time.

It was a horrible way to live.

Eventually I received physical therapy to treat my vertigo. And then instead of living my life five minutes at a time, I could live it by the hour and then by the day.

When we are under stress, (and I’ve written this before) our vision narrows. In the worst cases we literally develop tunnel vision. Our brains constrict our lives down to the smallest possible thing we can handle. When I had vertigo that was five minutes.

But I lived in those minutes. I went to work. I taught. I got up every morning and ate breakfast. I came home at night, ate dinner and slept. I functioned within those minutes. I kept going even when I was terrified and sick.

Today’s gospel reading is from Matthew 14:22-33. It is my favorite chapter these days. Peter steps off the boat to walk on the water out to Jesus. At some point he becomes frightened though and begins to sink.

I keep wondering what would have happened had he kept going even though he was afraid. Is fear alone enough to make us sink or can we be afraid and still have the faith to walk on water?

That is what I tell myself these days. No matter how tired I am, no matter how hard it is to continue to keep up with all the craziness and responsibilities of life, no matter how afraid I am, I know I can’t stop. I know I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, because if I do stop, I might not be able to get started again.

However there is some comfort to be had in the tale of Peter. When he started to sink, he called out to Jesus to save him and Jesus “immediately reached out his hand and caught him.”

That word there—it’s immediately.

Jesus didn’t run to Peter. He didn’t wait to see what would happen next. Peter called out to him and “immediately” he was there. There was no wait time.

Jesus save me.

Three simple words.

Jesus Saves

As my mom tells the story, when she and my uncle were little, every day they would drive past a building with a neon sign in the window. The neon sign said in big, bold letters the words, “Jesus Saves.” My mom and uncle, having no idea what those words meant, decided that the building must be a bank.

As in … Jesus saves and so should you.

Or … Jesus saves thousands of dollars on home mortgages when he banks with us.

In one of my favorite novels for children The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963, the main character Kenny becomes convinced that the new kid is going to save him from being bullied. And, because Kenny pays attention in Sunday school, he knows that God has sent him this new kid, that God has sent him his own “personal saver.’

This past Sunday, cnn.com had an article entitled, “Do you speak Christian?” Christians have their own language, the article says, a language that is sometimes misused and often misunderstood.

And I think one of the phrases that is frequently confusing to people is “Jesus saves” or its cousin question “Have you been saved?”

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been asked the question, “Have you been saved?” And if I’m being honest, I have always found that question off-putting. It’s a question that seems designed to put people on the defensive as if they must now prove their worth.

And if the person who’s being asked isn’t Christian, then the question just becomes awkward because suddenly you’re speaking a whole other language and using words in a way people aren’t familiar with.

Because what does it mean to be saved? We know what it means in a literal sense. If I’m drowning and you throw me a life preserver, you have saved me. But what does it mean biblically?

Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

But what does that mean “you will be saved?”

Notice that the object here in Romans (this is where I put on my English teacher hat) is “you.” If you do this, you will be saved.

But how are we saved? What are we saved from? Who has done this saving for us?

What does it mean that Jesus saves?

Well, simply put, it means that Jesus suffered, died and rose again so that our sins might be forgiven, so that we might be saved from an eternity of separation from God.

Okay, maybe it’s not that simple.

In my last post, I wrote about how fantasy and science fiction stories reflect the greater truth of what moves us and makes us tick.

So let me use the novel The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis to help illustrate the concept behind being “saved.”

At the end of The Silver Chair, the great king, Caspian, has died. Aslan, Eustace and Jill gather together at a stream high up in the Mountain of Aslan.

“There, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept.”

Aslan then instructs Eustace to pluck a thorn from a nearby thicket and bring it to him. The thorn is horribly long, nearly a foot in length and sharp as anything. Aslan then tells Eustace to drive the thorn into his paw which Eustace does.

“And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all redness that you have ever seen or imagined. And it splashed into the stream over the dead body of the King … And the dead King began to be changed. His white beard turned to grey, and from grey to yellow … and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them—a very young man, or boy.”

And here comes my most favorite part, “He gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.”

Caspian was dead. He had died of old age. He had lived a good life, served Aslan well and in the end, he died. The end. Except it wasn’t the end.

Aslan saves Caspian. At first this seems to be a resurrection. He’s brought Caspian back to life, but it’s not. Caspian’s human life is complete. He cannot return to Narnia. He is part of Aslan’s country now.

How does Aslan save Caspian? He saves him with his blood. He sacrifices part of himself so that Caspian might escape the bonds of death and share eternal life with Aslan. There is no hocus-pocus here, no spells cast, no enchantments. This is Aslan shedding his blood to break the hold death has on Caspian.

Aslan saves Caspian and it is glorious and wonderful. It is joyful and filled with laughter and those “wild kisses of a Lion.”

Aslan has transformed Caspian through his sacrifice.

And that is what being saved means. Being saved is transformative. For Caspian, it washed away old age, but for us, it washes away every part of us that is earth bound, every part of us that drives a wedge between us and God. It washes away sin.

It is healing.

So that when Jesus saves, he completes in us the most magnificent healing imaginable.

Jesus died on the cross for all of us, every single last one of us. It was a gift given to all.

Romans 10:12 goes on to say, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.”

In the end, I think the reason that words sometimes fail us, why words liked “saved” and phrases like “have you been saved?” fail us, is that words alone cannot capture the scope of what has been done for us.

The words seem trite and awkward because what Jesus did on the cross goes beyond words.

And that is why C.S. Lewis did such a wonderful thing with his Narnia books. He gave us images to go along with those words. The blood of Aslan led directly to the transformation of Caspian. We can hold onto those images and embrace them when everything else seems too difficult to comprehend.

Jesus saves.

Jesus saves us every day.