Early on this Good Friday, as we fast and pray, my thoughts turn to one of my favorite scenes from both the book and the film of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers:

“Sam: By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened.”

[Aragorn and Èowyn embrace as Rohan is victorious at Helm's Deep.]

“Sam: But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”

[The sun shines on Isengard, as Merry, Pippin, and the Ents celebrate victory.]

“Sam: Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.”

“Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?”

“Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”

Amen! The darkness of Good Friday will be followed by the dawn of the Resurrection morning. Evil will not triumph! Nothing that is truly good will be lost, because God remembers it; and the good that God remembers He will make real again at the “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21).

May you have a blessed Easter!

Thanks for your prayers for us this week, as we seek to get our lives and hearts “fine-tuned” to the Lord for the road ahead.

Yesterday, we were meditating on the phrase “The Lord is my shepherd”, and said it in three different ways, each time emphasizing a different word: Lord… my… shepherd.

This got me thinking about “metaphors” - the word-pictures that make up so much of our lives as human beings: pictures that are often our only way of really visualizing things that go beyond our own horizons and knowledge. Metaphors are so central to the biblical revelation that Judeo-Christian faith is unimaginable without them.

We tend to associate metaphors with literature and feeling: “The Lord is my shepherd”, “He will hide you under his wings”… or, on a more mundane level: “Mr. Smith’s an old dragon.” So it may seem surprising, but metaphors are quite common in the history of science. In fact, metaphors have often been the key to opening up entirely new areas of exploration of the natural world. For example: someone, many years ago, was thinking about electricity and started using the metaphor of a flowing stream of water. Out of that grew a whole flood of questions and insights: Does electricity have a “current”? Can it meet “resistance”? Does it have different degrees of force behind it? Scientific knowledge took a major leap forward with the birth of that metaphor and the questions that arose out of it.

Metaphors can be extremely powerful things, leading and directing our thinking. Interestingly, Israel classically rejected some metaphors for God and her worship of him that were very common in the surrounding cultures, especially all metaphors with sexual associations. (Fertility cults were the bane of Israel for generations.) But the metaphors Israel accepted are at the tap-root of our faith: God is our “Maker” and “Father”; Christ, our “Shepherd” and the “Lamb of God”. These are no less “real” because they are metaphors. (Electrical “current” is certainly no less real because it is described with a metaphor.) Metaphors are just describing in picture-words things that soar beyond our imagination.

Part of the excitement of spiritual growth comes from discovering the depth of what these mean in each of our lives. I’d like to suggest taking a moment today and saying it three different ways: “The LORD… is MY… SHEPHERD… I shall not want”.

Tim and Judy Gordon had extra tickets to The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and invited us to see it with them this evening.

It’s well done (the computer work isn’t quite as spectacular as The Lord of the Rings but is good, solid work.) Above all, it’s true to the original intention of Lewis. See it this weekend if you can. Seanne (our oldest) tells us that it’s the first weekend that really counts in the evaluation of the success or failure of a film, and it’s in the interest of the Kingdom that this one succeed so that more may follow! Why go to Narnia at all?

Aslan himself said it:

‘You are too old, children,’ said Aslan, ‘and you must begin to come close to your own world now.’
‘It isn’t Narnia, you know,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?’
‘But you shall meet me, dear one.’ said Aslan.
‘Are - are you there too, Sir?’ said Edmund.
‘I am,’ said Aslan. ‘But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name.
This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.’”
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, p. 216