Breathing on the Stones

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there is a scene that has quietly undone readers for generations. Aslan enters the courtyard of the White Witch's castle, where dozens of creatures stand frozen in stone — a giant, a centaur, a great lion, the beloved faun Mr. Tumnus. They are not dead, exactly, but they are not alive either. They are stuck in the precise posture of their last terrified moment.

And then Aslan breathes on them.

Lewis describes it with beautiful restraint. Color floods back into gray stone. A tail twitches. Eyes blink. The stone lion shakes his mane and roars. One by one, the courtyard fills with noise and warmth and movement where there had been only cold silence.

What strikes me most is that Aslan does not reshape them into something new. He restores them to exactly who they were before the curse — only now they are free.

This is the work of the Almighty in our lives. God does not look at what sin and shame and suffering have made of us and decide to start over with better material. He breathes on the stone places. He calls back the color. He restores us to the very selves He always intended us to be.

You are not beyond that breath. The courtyard is never too cold, and the stone is never too thick, for the Lion who is also the Lamb.