A Voyage

God's been changing me this summer, and I have to say, I really like His work.  :)  He's magnificent!  The more He changes me, the more I start to hear Him speak to me in some of the strangest ways...for instance, through secular movies.  This one's a little less secular than Harry Potter, but still.  (Thought for another day..."secular" versus "Christian" life...is there a difference, should there be?)  So tonight, I watched the newest Narnia movie-the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Now, CS Lewis was a Christian, and did try to write the Narnia series as a Christian allegory, but I feel like God taught me several things through this movie, so I'm going to share them here.  I never thought that God would speak to me through popular films, but hey, if He can use them, the least I can do is listen up.  :)

So the first quote I wrote down was "We have nothing if not belief."  Reepicheep, the cute little mouse, said this towards the beginning of the movie.  I don't remember what happened prior to this, but the point is still important.   We have NOTHING without belief.  This world is harsh and terrible and there is a lot of brokenness all around us, but if we don't have hope that there is a greater plan, a greater purpose, we have nothing.  There is a greater plan despite all the brokenness, even when it's hard to see.  "I wish I could see just three steps in front of me" as one song puts it.  Another analogy is we are standing directly against a mural, only seeing a tiny fragment of the whole bigger picture.  God sees it all...and lets us in on what we need to know, when we need to know it.  There is hope amidst the brokenness.

In the movie, Lucy desperately wants to be as beautiful as her older sister Susan...so much that she wants to be Susan.  When she comes across a spell book that has a spell for turning people into "the beauty they wish they could be," she jumps at the chance, and essentially becomes Susan.  There is a scene when she looks into a mirror and has a vision of her brothers coming up to her, telling her she is beautiful, and then saying the whole family was together-but there is no Lucy in the picture!  She wished herself away in her desire to be her sister.  After the vision, Aslan appears next to her in the mirror, and Lucy says "I didn't mean to choose all that."  Aslan tells her to not doubt her value.  There a million take away points that come to mind with this.  A few of them:  a) our choices have consequences.  There is no way around that.  I believe that God gave us free will to make choices-granted, He has desires and wishes and hopes for us-but ultimately, we have to CHOOSE that path.  Because we are made in his image, and because of what was done for us on the cross, we should live our lives as a reflection of He who made us.  However, we ultimately have to make that choice, and when we make choices that are not His will, we will have to face the things that come from those choices.  God forgives us for them, and still loves us despite/in spite of our wrongdoings, but our choices still have consequences.  b)  When we desire something so much, it gets in the way of God's vision for us.  God ultimately desires us to come to Him, beyond all other things.  But when we let earthly things get in the way of that, we miss out on living as He truly desires us to.  c)  America and the never-ending quest for beauty.  Beauty above all other things.  It's crazy how awful of self-images we all have, but part of it is due to our culture and our culture's perception of beauty.  I can go on and on about this-I have self-image issues, as everyone does, but mine stem from a little different of a source than most-and it just pains me to see how much we can't look past ourselves and see Him in us.  We are made in His image-what could be more beautiful?  d) As much as it is easy to say that we all should follow Him 100%, we are human and have other desires.  If we came across that magic spell book, what spell would we longingly search for and not hesitate to speak?  I think that those things we so long to fix in ourselves are probably the things getting in the way of our relationship with God the most.  I know what things I would look for, but how do I remove that desire from my life?  But this blog isn't about me-so what would your most desired magic spell be?

There's probably a lot more from that last point, but I'm going to move on for now.  While we were watching this part, one of the people I was watching with said, and I quote, "Wish we all had a smart lion around."  Aslan seems to appear at the times they need him most and help them to solve the things going wrong.  Well, guess what-we DO all have a smart lion around, all the time!  Granted, Aslan is a little more tangible, but at the same time, God is all around us, always there and willing to help, when we let Him.  I have to say, it kind of hurt to see one of the people I was watching with not see that.  God is a lot less tangible, He's more of the whisper in the breeze, or the gentle nagging thought in the back of our mind-but He is there nevertheless.

So not long after Lucy went through the whole vision in the mirror and realized that she had value in herself, the little girl who follower her dad onto the ship at their first stop (watch the movie, I can't explain it) looked at Lucy and told her "I want to be just like you when I grow up."  Lucy said, "When you grow up, you should be just like you."  Two things-first of all, how awesome is that.  :)  Lucy dealt with self image issues but was able to learn that she was complete in who she was.  Because this is something she had experienced herself, she understood that girl's desire.  Maybe that's the reason we are faced with some of the challenges we face in life, so that we can grow and learn and then help others?  Or maybe this is a chicken and egg situation....maybe instead we grow and learn from the things we deal with and then people are placed in our life who can grow and learn from us or who we can grow and learn from.  We face challenges and then can share what we've learned with others, which brings me to my second point-the human experience, I guess, for lack of a better term.  We all, in the midst of our troubles, ultimately just want to be comforted, reassured, and know we are not alone.  Again, because Lucy had faced the same thing, she could understand what that girl was thinking.  When we are going through a tough time, I think that's what we all want-someone who understands, or even if they haven't had the same experience, someone who will listen to us talk about our experience and try to understand us.  Ultimately, we want someone would reassure us that "it'll be all right" and that we are not alone-and most of all, that we are still loved regardless of what we've done/has happened to us/what we're going through.  Thoughts on that?

The next quote I wrote down was another one from Reepicheep (my favorite character for sure, besides Aslan, of course).  He told Eustace the dragon "Extraordinary things happen to extraordinary people."  I don't really have a huge thought on this one, but I guess there's this-Eustace was a pretty nasty kid, and still, he was used for the greater good and ended up being the hero of the story.  God works through us even in our worst times and transforms us to something new that is in His image.  He takes the ordinary and makes us extraordinary.

In the climax of the movie, Lucy prays to Aslan for help, and a bird comes out of the clouds and shows them the way out of the dark fog.  In this world, our help from God is not always so tangible or recognizable, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.  My take away point from this part I guess would be that help comes to those who ask?  If we ask God, present Him with our requests, He hears and listens.  Thoughts??

Again, in the climax, the green mist that basically represents evil pushes back when Eustace is about to save them all and end the battle of good vs. evil.  Evil strikes the hardest when good is about to prevail...and yes, this is present in our world, not just in mythical lands like Narnia.  How this relates my life, I'm not 100% sure, but evil is definitely present and at work in our world.  When something good is about to happen or someone is really working for good, a bunch of really tough stuff comes their way.  It's the balance that is our world, but it's part of what makes this life really tough.

One other quote that struck me that I'll share-"It was a good pain," said Eustace, when telling them what is was like to be transformed back from a dragon.  So often we think of pain as bad, but pain essentially just brings change.  It's a sign that something is wrong.  How can it be made right?  More to come here, I think, but for now-pain does not necessarily equal bad.  Interesting.

Reepicheep at the end asks Aslan if he can see Aslan's country with his own eyes, that he's hardly worthy but would love to go.  Thought for all of us-do we desire just to see "Aslan's country" (heaven and all the wonders that it is supposed to bring) or do we desire "Aslan" (Jesus) himself?

One more thing-there is a verse in the Gospels that talks about having faith like a child.  While I was watching the movie, that verse just popped in my head-it seems like Lucy, to me anyway, exemplifies that verse more than anyone else I can think of.  To me, Lucy's faith in Aslan is the child-like faith Jesus was talking about.  Again, I could be very wrong, but she definitely has something special, and different than the faith the others have in Aslan.  Reepicheep, for instance, bows at Aslan's feet while Lucy rushes to bury her head in his fur.

God can speak to us through anything because He is in everything-if only we let Him.  Also:  I would like to reiterate that the things I am writing in this blog generally do not come from me-they come from Him.  Granted, I could be getting a lot of it wrong, but I'm just passing on things that I think He is telling me.

I'll leave you with these two take away questions that have led me to some really interesting reflections tonight:  What is the magic spell that we would most like to possess?  Also...what has been most comforting to you in your times of trouble?  Obvious we want our trouble and our pain taken away, but what have you searched for most besides removing the source of the problem?