The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by Susie Olson
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a story about the adventures of four children, Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter. They enter the amazing world of Narnia through a magical wardrobe while palying hide-and-seek in the home of an elderly professor
In Narnia they find a wonderful place where talking animals, dwarfs, giants and others live. However, there is one problem. Narnia has been cursed by the evil, white witch so that it is always winter but never Christmas. Can you imagine that? Always winter but never Christmas! How awful.
There is only one hope for the frightened children and Narnia – Aslan. ‘Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion’. Asland is the Saviour. As Mr. Beaver said to Edmund,
‘Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.
When he bears his teeth, Winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane,
We shall have spring again.’
When Susan understood this she was shocked and asked, ‘Is he – quite safe?’ Then, Mr. Beaver tells her more: “ Safe?.. Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he is good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
To end the ‘deep magic’ that had been put on Narnia, by the White witch, Aslan allowed himself to be killed. Nothing before had been so difficult. He felt ‘sad and lonely’. The children cried as his four paws were tied together. However, Aslan ‘made no noise, even when they cut into his flesh’. His great mane was shaved off. Then he was dragged to the Stone Table and teased and bullied for being just a ‘great cat’. Though all this Aslan only ‘looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry or afraid, but a little sad’ and then they killed him.
The writer of Narnia, a man called C S Lewis, wrote this story as a way to teach some truths about Jesus Christ. In the Bible Jesus is called the ‘Lion of Judah’. Like Aslan, he willingly died, not on a Stone Table but on a wooden cross. He was also sad and alone but he had to die because of the power of the ‘deep magic’ that spoils the world we live in. This ‘deep magic’ is called sin by God. Sin leads to many things. Because of sin we are selfish and want our own way. As a result of sin, we fight and argue with our brothers and sisters or friends at school. It’s what leads us to disobey our mums and dads or teachers. It’s what tempts us not to tell the truth about not doing our homework or about where we got the latest video game from. Maybe you can think of some other things that God calls sin which spoil our world?
It’s a hard thing to understand how Jesus’ death broke the ‘deep magic’ in this world. We know, we have done and thank him for breaking the power of the deep magic, when he died on the cross, then he becomes our special friend and helper. This is good news.
There is also more good news. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe something wonderful happened.
‘The children looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself. “Oh Aslan! “ cried the children staring up at him, almost as frightened as they were glad. “Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” “Not now,” said Aslan.
Like in the story, Jesus didn’t stay dead After three days he came back to life and that is how we can be sure that he is good and that he is God. Now, because he is alive in heaven, we can talk to him and he has promised to hear our prayers and to be with us.