not a tame lion

I dashed from York as term ended to come and watch the Chronicles of Narnia in Sheffield with a couple of friends. I found it beautiful and healing. I would have been glad for longer to have been spent on the moments of pathos; altogether though it was superb. We sat together afterwards looking at the illustrations from the book and seeing what a good job had been done on many counts. My sense of the film connected to the way I've been rather shaken by the power of the Canterbury experience. Also, I am deeply aware of how untame the nature of God is -- and how remarkably unpredictable.

God and one friend in particular have been, this year, to me, like the frontiers of the sea, coming and going, sometimes quite unbearably. I wouldn't want it any other way though -- and I want to let the knowing of them to continue to be to me as strong as the tide. Lucy, in book and film, wonders about Aslan's sudden departure -- and I wonder, sometimes, whether the sea will ever come back, and of course I won't know that unless it does. That's the agony and ecstasy of letting others be the seas that they are to me. That's what costs so much in risking desiring God, for God is stronger than the power of the sea and God moves across the face of my life in ways as mysterious as they are overwhelming: the untame lion who is very kind.