On my drives back home to visit my family, I'd listen to the Chronicles of Narnia on CD. It's the BBC version, and the voices and music and sound effects, plus the bits of backstory that bookend each tale are so well done. Those books have really touched me to the core, though. I had read the series for the first time maybe 4 or so years ago, and it's interesting how they kind of hit you in different ways in different times of your life. New things you didn't notice before. It's so much more than childrens' books; it's incredible.
It's been a lonely time recently, but the way those books describe Aslan as always being there, even though we can't see him, captures the idea more than real-life lessons or words do. The books also capture all the different ways people relate to him. It's not all rosy. It's real. There's fear, shame, but always love, from me to him, that I relate strongly to. On the other side, there's acceptance, not treating me as I deserve but grace and the lifting of my head, and love from him.
What struck me most 4 years ago was how much the characters made me love and want to strive for righteousness (in a good way, for its own sake). Now, I guess I'm more drawn to Aslan himself. Before, I thought the last book was kind of boring, anticlimactic, and a bit gloomy. But now, I'm wondering how I could've ever thought that. Farther in and farther up, every place even more wonderful than the last on into infinity, the incredible things of the old world just a shadow of the real thing that really IS, the great reunions, being with Aslan and seeing him face to face. Frightening but wonderful.
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