The first day of work wasn’t so bad. I got my first deal, so that broke the ice, and I have a few people that will give me a deal later probably. I can see how this job may get very depressing. Going door to door, all day, walking constantly, etc. But the support my team gives me helps quite a bit and making one deal can make a lot of frustration go away. So, for now, my prayer is that I will make deals at a steady pace, so I don’t get too frustrated.
Katy came up with quite an epiphany Tuesday night. You see, I’ve begun to read The Chronicles of Narnia again (I’ve found it to be extremely therapeutic to read children’s books every once in a while) and I was telling my friends at Point Teams that I was having trouble understanding some inside humor that C. S. Lewis places in his book, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. Every time the narrator mentions one of the children entering the wardrobe into Narnia, he always mentions how silly or foolish it is to shut the door behind you. In every instance that Lucy or Edmund, Peter, or Susan enter Narnia, Lewis is always sure to say “that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe. I just didn’t get the humor here. I’m assuming that this is possibly some English humor, or and inside joke between Lewis himself and the intended audience.
Coincidentally, that evening at Point Teams, we were discussing the benefits and the dangers of an imagination for the Christian. We concluded that God gave us our imaginations, therefore we should use it actively as long as we remain to have a firm grasp on reality. For instance, it is fine and even beneficial at times to imagine what Jesus looked like, physically, just as long as we don’t begin to believe that Jesus had to look like that. The Bible doesn’t give us a physical description of Christ on purpose. God knows human hearts and knows how we can become fixated in external things, therefore we aren’t given a description. But all this is to say that the imagination is still good. We just must remain rooted in truth and reality.
Then Katy made a great connection to my thoughts about the wardrobe. She thought it could be possible that Lewis wanted to symbolize the very truth we were discussing. It is possible that Lewis was communicating that the fantasy world of Narnia was welcome to enter into, just as long as you leave the wardrobe door open to reality. Narnia is filled with both good and evil. It can be wonderful and it can be destructive. The key is knowing that it is not reality. You must always leave the door open and be able to see the upper room of that old house, the real world, where you belong.
Now, I’m not sure that C. S. Lewis had any intention of making this point, but it sure is fun to imagine that he did. After all, English professors all over the world do the same thing, regardless of the author’s original intent. So, the point is, use you imagination. It make life a whole lot more interesting.