Heart Tracks - The Dwarf Within

     "Cain knew God.  He just had no faith.....Faithlessness is not unbelief.  Faithlessness is the refusal to trust.  It's the refusal to rest in God, and therefore, risk for God."  Mark Buchanan

     In The Last Battle, the 7th and final book in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles Of Narnia series, Lewis tells of how the inhabitants of Narnia have just fought and won a great battle against the powers of evil.  Now they and their king, Tirian, await the coming of Aslan the Lion.  They wait with joyful expectation, and when Aslan does appear, they surge forward to touch and be touched by Him.  To experience the sweetness and fullness of who He is.  They are those that Paul wrote of, the ones who "Have loved His appearing."  Yet there was another group who held themselves apart from it all.  They view Aslan with distrust, and so do not, cannot partake of the intimacy that is before them.  Lucy cries out to Aslan, "Could you - will you - do something for these poor dwarfs?"  "Dearest," says Aslan, "I will show both what I can and cannot do."  Aslan then moves towards them, offering all of Himself to them, but the dwarfs only response is continued distrust, continued faithlessness.  "We haven't let anyone take us in," they proudly declare.  "The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."

Aslan then says to Lucy, "They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief.  Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in, they cannot be taken out.  But come children, I have other work to do."

    The dwarfs are for the dwarfs.  I am for myself.  We are for ourselves.  To place all of ourselves, our need, our hope, our very life, requires a surrender so many are unwilling to make.  To give all to Him is to risk all in Him.  Part of us longs to do that, but another part, oftentimes the greater part of us, like the Dwarfs, holds back, stands at a distance from Him.  We will not risk being taken in, and so, we are never taken out.  As a result, like the dwarfs, we're left to our own understanding, our own strength, our own devices, our own cunning.  Like the dwarfs, we go on living apart, thinking ourselves free, yet all the while imprisoned in cells of our own choosing.  Jesus, like Aslan, will not remain and plead with us.  He offers Himself, but if we refuse, if we choose faithlessness rather than faith, He will move on from us.  He has other work to do.  Other lives to lay hold of.  Others who truly do love His appearing.  Will He come our way again?  I believe He will, but what reason is there to think that we will be any more ready to trust Him then if we will not now? 

   Always before us is the call of Christ to "launch out into the deep" with Him.  The dwarf within will not hear it, and will not go there.  The dwarf will always be for the dwarf.  Cain, and those of his tribe, will always be for themselves.  Who will we stand with today?  With Tirian the King, or with Cain the Dwarfs?  Who lives and reigns within?

Blessings,
Pastor O