And so it is that we must always be a few steps behind our true selves. We suspect we are not yet what we are supposed to be. There is a sense of incompleteness about us, a feeling of still being in process. There are times when we wake up with a non-specific ache, a longing with which we cannot name, always at the tip of our tongues. There are times when the yearning catches us by surprise, knocking the wind off of us, and the sting of fresh tears are like rivers of frigid waters unleashed from dam bursts of dreams, and we sigh. We have gotten a whiff of scent of this far-off place. It is the smell of sunshine, and grass, and the fragrance after the rains – ethereal, yet earthy. We crave for a sense of fullness, a sagacity that comes from the ancient and deep foundations from which this world is built upon.
But hear this: this odyssey leads us inward, outward. We must embark on this perilous voyage, not just to seek adventures, but to discover what has been forgotten, to find what haunts us. The key to finding our true, original selves lay waiting from underneath the layers of accretion we have learned to depend on with surprising tenacity. As Eustace* learned, allow the unsafe, and yet liberating power of the Benevolent One to scrape off the dragon skin off you. Allow Him to peel away the unwanted coverings that stifle and obscure what is hidden. Let him discard that which gets in the way. Then allow Him to dress you – to cover you with His righteousness, and you will begin to see yourself being restored, being made complete. The voyage then begins.
*From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. "There was once a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." He was transformed into a filthy, ugly dragon (a manifestation of his own nature as a beastly, selfish boy) only to be restored back as a human when he allowed Aslan, the benevolent Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia to scrape off his dragon skin. Eustace has this to say when Aslan peeled off his malodorous outer coverings: “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began to pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeing the stuff peel off…”
But hear this: this odyssey leads us inward, outward. We must embark on this perilous voyage, not just to seek adventures, but to discover what has been forgotten, to find what haunts us. The key to finding our true, original selves lay waiting from underneath the layers of accretion we have learned to depend on with surprising tenacity. As Eustace* learned, allow the unsafe, and yet liberating power of the Benevolent One to scrape off the dragon skin off you. Allow Him to peel away the unwanted coverings that stifle and obscure what is hidden. Let him discard that which gets in the way. Then allow Him to dress you – to cover you with His righteousness, and you will begin to see yourself being restored, being made complete. The voyage then begins.
*From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. "There was once a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." He was transformed into a filthy, ugly dragon (a manifestation of his own nature as a beastly, selfish boy) only to be restored back as a human when he allowed Aslan, the benevolent Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia to scrape off his dragon skin. Eustace has this to say when Aslan peeled off his malodorous outer coverings: “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began to pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeing the stuff peel off…”
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