“The work had gone well so far and it was a merry meal. Only after the second helping of goat did Edmund say, “Where’s that blighter Eustace?”
As the curtains draw back on Chapter Six of our story, we see Caspian and the children celebrating work well done with a marvelous feast of roast goat and wine by the river. And yet, as the meal lingers on, we hear Edmund asking for the whereabouts of his difficult, sullen and unimaginative cousin, Eustace.
Where was Eustace? He has wandered off and found himself in a dragon’s lair -- and it’s a lair filled with mountains of treasure! Once the dragon who lives in the cave is officially dead, Eustace thinks his prospects are finally looking up. With this much wealth, he can live like a King in Narnia and finally stick it to those horrid cousins! Revenge! With treasures in his pockets and gold on his arm, Eustace falls asleep.
And here we see C.S. Lewis’ brilliant tableau of the deceptive human heart & God’s mercy so masterfully written....
“He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”
Whenever I read this chapter, my heart is always deeply pricked by that sentence. I wish it was harder for me to relate to Eustace! He didn’t become a dragon overnight. Instead, when he awoke he was finally able to see his reflection in the water and was suddenly aware of what he already was...what he had been becoming for a very long time. A dragon. A greedy, hoarding, bully of a dragon. As it says in Proverbs (23:7)..”for what a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
Painfully, I can relate. I allow sinful, dragonish thoughts to grow. They begin as the tiniest seeds of lust, envy or fear, and instead of nipping them in the bud, I turn them over and over in my mind, admiring them like shiny gems. I listen to the lies and insecurities and suddenly I find myself far closer to a dragon than I ever thought possible!
But what awoke Eustace? A pain in his arm. The golden bracelet he had shoved on in his haste to snatch as much treasure as possible was suddenly biting and pinching into his now large, dragon foreleg.
It was the pain that woke him up.
It was pain that caused him to climb out of the dragon’s cave, wander to the river, see his reflection and face the reality of what he truly was.
C.S. Lewis, in his book “The Problem with Pain” says “...God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
Gentle admonitions hadn’t worked. Strong criticism hadn’t worked. Dramatic events hadn’t seemed to phase him. He had been in a bedroom, seen a painting come to life and been sucked into an ocean for goodness sake! No use. Like myself at times, Eustace was far too mired in pride and lies to hear the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit. It took real, sharp pain to wake him up and offer him another chance to change. Can you relate Eustace, as I do?
Can you identify times in your life where God has used a painful experience (self-inflicted or otherwise) as a megaphone to your deaf ears?
How do you respond to these painful awakenings?
