Day 47 - I Believe

Wow -the sun came out today! What a difference it made to the whole place! We had a lovely time walking up the 'Old Man of Coniston' and the views have been stunning. Sunshine makes the world bright and cheerful doesn't it?

In the C.S.Lewis story 'The Silver Chair', the children go on a quest to find the lost Prince of Narnia accompanied by a strange creature called Puddleglum. Their search takes them deep under the ground into an underworld ruled by a mysterious 'Green Lady' who is really a witch, where they find Prince Rilian and try to make an escape. However, the Green Lady returns and using her magic she lulls them into a sort of trance where she convinces them that there is no such place as Narnia and that there is no such thing as the sun.... remember, they have been living underground for quite a while at this point. This is Puddleglum's shining moment. He places one of his feet into the fire in order to bring him to his senses and says something which wakes the others from their trance. Here is a slightly abridged version of his speech:

'Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in this case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well it strikes me as a pretty poor one. So that's why I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it and I'm going to live as like a Narnian a I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for overland.'

I sat quietly for a few moments in the local parish church today. Underneath a circular ring of lamps hung a piece of paper on which the local children had drawn a picture of Jesus' head, with a sad face, and the lamps seemed to be the crown of thorns on his head. Very effective, I thought, in these days as we run up to Easter. 

In our society today are very vocal voices of atheism, ridiculing the traditional Christian beliefs as fairy stories. All I can say is that, if they are only made up stories, I'd rather spend my life as a Christian than any alternative anyone else can come up with!. And I'll close with the words of Jesus' disiples when others were leaving Him and He asked them if they wanted to leave too,

 "Where would we go to? You have the words of eternal life."