Day 290: Like in Narnia This Curse Will End

DAY 290

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Forty-two    Tuesday 29 December 2020

Like in Narnia

This Curse Will End

“As COVID-19 cases in my city climb to record levels and county officials warn the vulnerable among us to shelter in place, I feel as if I’m living in the cursed kingdom of Narnia in C.S. Lewis’ Children’s fantasy ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.’ In Narnia, it’s ‘always winter and never Christmas.’…The Narnia allegory sprang from Lewis’ own childhood struggles with loneliness and despair. Lewis credited his faith with restoring his hope. Aslan the lion is the Christ figure in the chronicles. While we’re waiting for vaccine to reach us and end the Covid curse cast in our land, I’ll take shelter from the cold winter by writing daily in the gratitude journal I started in March during the first lockdown. And I’ll hold onto the hope my own faith provides that even though there was no Christmas this year, there will be an end to this long winter.” - From a current newspaper article by the same title

C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963, was particularly adept at presenting truths at times too familiar in an allegorical context stimulating our thinking and refreshing our beliefs. “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,” the first in a series of seven books making up “The Chronicles of Narnia” remains the most familiar due to its contemporary depiction in a full length movie by the same name.  

It is at its core the ancient classic depiction of the struggle between good and evil with, as the writer of our article above reminds us, Christ portrayed as the lion Aslan. Lewis did not have to reach far for this image: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” Revelation 5:5. The reference here is of course to Jesus Christ.

Living in Alaska twice over the years I know what long seemingly interminable winters can be like. No matter how long and how dark, we knew they would end. So will this one. Why not watch “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” and do so through the eyes of this COVID winter.

Reflective question: Will you reach out today to someone for whom this ‘COVID winter’ is particularly difficult?

Reflective Scripture: Song of Songs 2:11 – “The winter is past…flowers appear on the earth;…”

Reflective hymn:

“’Tis Winter Now” – Samuel Longfellow (1819-1902) brother of the poet.

‘Tis winter now; the fallen snow has left the heavens all coldly clear;

Through leafless boughs the sharp winds blow, and all the earth lies dead and drear.

O God, you give the winter’s cold, as well as summer’s joyous rays,

You warmly in your love enfold, and keep us through life’s wintry days.