Now unto the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 4 children (sons of Adam and daughters of Eve) find themselves stumbling into the incredible world of Narnia where the White Witch has reigned for a hundred years shrouding the land in ice and cold. By playing on the weakness of one of the boys, Edmund, she accuses him of being a traitor and she dares Aslan to stop her.
“Tell you what is written on the very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill.”
When Aslan drew her aside and offered himself as a sacrifice in the place of the young boy Edmund, she thought she had won and celebrated the victory. She killed him on the Stone Table. But death could not hold him and after a time with a loud thunderous crack the stone table cracked in two and Aslan was resurrected. He spoke to the 2 girls and what he said was so significant;
“…that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
What a promise! The Word of God tells us that all, every single one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We were all traitors destined for death. But even in the beginning of time God had a plan to rescue us. So Jesus did what none of us could do for ourselves. Sinless, blameless and a willing victim, he conquered death so that we could have access to eternal life. Spectacular!!
There were so many other great points in this story but that was the highlight for me. I mean it doesn’t get much better than that. That is the good news! :)
The LW&W is a very profound story for me.... it was one of the first times I had experienced a death of an animal (the first being Orca the Killer Whale, and the second being Ginger the cab horse in Anna Sewell's Black Beauty). But there was something soooo profound about the death of Aslan that stayed with me for years. I cried hysterically as a kid when I first saw this, then read the book 4 times. In our house today are 2 pics of Aslan even. I always knew their was a profound symbolic allegory... though it took a while for it to sink in-especially since I am Jewish. Book 4 is one of my all time favorites.
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