Back in March, at the beginning of the pandemic and all that would follow, the church I served in Texas began doing daily video devotionals led by the pastoral staff. For the first video that I recorded, I read a passage from C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Having arrived at the end of 2020 and heading into 2021 still in a sea of uncertainty about what lies ahead, I find the passage still speaks to me and so I share it with you.
The setting is that the crew of Dawn Treader, including Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace, finds themselves in the waters of an island surrounded in darkness. There, they find one of the Narnian lords they have been seeking, who is half mad with fright. He warns them that on this island dreams come true. While that initially brings a sense of delight, it quickly becomes a sense of dread. “For it had taken everyone just that half-minute to remember certain dreams they had had - dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again - and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.”
The crew frantically tries to row out of the darkness and away from the island. Eventually, they begin to realize that, though they have rowed more time than it took them to get into the darkness, they are still surrounded and appear to have made no progress. Despair begins to set in at the thought that the darkness will never let them go. In that moment, Lucy utters a prayer, whispering “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.”
And that brings us to the passage, which I quote in full.
Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.
And the albatross leads them out of the darkness into the light.
Saints, let me offer to you two encouragements as we leave 2020 and enter a new year still mired in difficult circumstances that may seem never-ending and for many of us involve much more than the pandemic and its fallout. First, continue to cry out to the one who sends help. Not to a fictitious lion king but to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, even Jesus Himself, who is right now interceding for us as our sympathetic High Priest and comforting us by His Spirit. And second, be strong and courageous because you are dear to and loved by your Heavenly Father. And he says to you each day, “Courage, dear heart.”
