“Has your master magician, your uncle, power like mine?”
Remember that line from Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew? Digory and Polly are standing with Jadis, the evil last queen of Charn, before a pair of mighty doors. “The doors were dead black, either ebony or some black metal which is not found in our world. They were fastened with great bars, most of them too high to reach and all of them too heavy to lift.” The doors seemed impassable, immovable. There was no way but through them, and therefore there was no way. However, Jadis, as we all know, through wicked magic, reduces the doors to a pile of dust.
I read that not too long ago in a reread of the book, and found myself wishing Lewis had somewhere put a similar scene where a Narnian (or visitor from our world) had been faced with impassable gates, called on Aslan, and the gates had swung open. I also found myself thinking that there are times in life when it seems gigantic walls or doors are slammed down in our pathways and there is no way around or over – only through, and through is impossible.
There were some doors (looked more like walls, to me) in my path recently. I was totally convinced they were there to stay and would never move – I sure couldn’t budge them! Impossible…immovable…invincible…heart-wrenching.
“I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron.”
Sometimes, the faith to ask of God is all He asks of us. I had almost no hope of the doors being opened to me, but I knew the One, the Only One, who could open them – and I threw myself at His feet and pleaded that they be opened.
They crumbled into nothing.
