Book Excerpt
The Great Bridge-Builder
By Christin Ditchfield
Take It to Heart Ministries
CBN.com – In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the sequel to C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian,Edmund and Lucy and Caspian embark on an epic ocean voyage that takes them literally to the ends of the earth. They’re disappointed to learn that they cannot reach the Great Lion Aslan’s Country (or Heaven) the way that they have come. In fact, Edmund and Lucy must return home to England, never to visit Narnia again.
Edmund and Lucy are horribly upset.
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are -- are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
Aslan adds that one day they WILL reach His country and that it lies across a deep river. “But do not fear that,” He says. “For I am the Great Bridge-Builder.”
Over the years, in hymns, poems, and stories, Christians have often referred to death as “crossing the river” – because in the Old Testament, the Israelites had to cross the River Jordan to get to the Promised Land. (Joshua 1:2) We all have to die one day, and death is the way we cross from this world to the next – to Heaven. The Scripture says that we have been separated from God by our sin. (Isaiah 59:2, Romans 3:23) It comes between us and Him like a great gulf or chasm, a divide. (Luke 16:26) But by dying in our place and paying the penalty for our sin himself, Jesus has made it possible for us to be reconciled to God and to receive the gift of eternal life. (2 Corinthians 5:17-19) Jesus laid down His life across that gulf, that chasm so that we don’t have to drown in our sins (1 John 3:16). He became – as C.S. Lewis put it -- our great “Bridge Builder.”
Find more on the teaching of Scripture in The Chronicles of Narnia on the Narnia page of www.TakeItToHeartRadio.com.
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Excerpted from A Family Guide to the Bible: Biblical Truths in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia by Christin Ditchfield, Crossway Books, 2003. Used with Permission.
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