Remember my two friends who committed to pray for me every day from the beginning of July to the beginning of September? I spoke with one of them last week, and I gave her some updates, and she spoke words straight from God said well, that all sounds pretty okay to me, and I was fairly underwhelmed. I mean, where was the anointed spiritual mandate?
So now I’m avoiding the other friend, because the pressure. Either she has something for me or she doesn’t. Friend #2, if you’re reading this, don’t call me. I’ll call you. Not.
It does feel good to know that people are thinking of me when we are apart. It helps me feel a little less alone, and kind of like I have fellow pilgrims on this journey. I don’t hate that.
It actually reminds me of one of my all-time favorite passages from C.S. Lewis’ book, A Horse and His Boy, where the voice of Aslan (The Lion, who is invisible but has been traveling with Shasta) is having a conversation with (the boy) Shasta about who He is and some circumstances that had transpired.
“I can’t see you at all,” said Shasta, after staring very hard.
Then (for an even more terrifying idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, “You’re not – not something dead, are you? Oh please – please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world!”
Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face.“There,” it said, “that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”
Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis (Shasta’s traveling companion). And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.
“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.
“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.
“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.
“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and – ”
“There was only one: but he was swift of foot.”
“How do you know?”
“I was the lion.”
And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”
“It was I”
“But what for?”
“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
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