Dear Holy Week Travelers,
This week when I was rifling through a drawer in my desk looking for something, I found a postcard I bought in Belfast. In lovely script font, it says: “Courage, dear heart."
It is a quote by Belfast native, C.S. Lewis from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, part of The Chronicles of Narnia series. Lucy, the youngest of the Pevensie children, finds herself on a ship headed toward a dark, dangerous island. The sailors are trying to steer the ship away from this force of darkness, and Lucy sends up a prayer to the great lion Aslan, a symbol Lewis uses for God.
In the midst of this panic, Lucy whispered, ‘Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.’ Then, all of a sudden, a small beam of light enters the darkness and illumines the ship, then eventually she saw it as an albatross to guide them out of the darkness. As it circled the ship, the albatross whispered to Lucy, 'Courage, dear heart,' and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s. I wonder how many of us in these weeks have prayed Lucy’s prayer?
The walk with Jesus through Holy Week is the actual voyage of treading until dawn. If we are to receive the help we need and recognize the full power of love’s resurrection, Jesus requires us to...
