From Stone to Flesh: Eustace's Unbearable Skin

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the insufferable boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard and wakes to discover he has become a dragon himself. His greedy, selfish heart has finally taken outward form. At first he tries to fix it alone, scratching and peeling away the dragon skin with his own claws. Layer after layer comes off, but underneath there is always more dragon.

Then Aslan appears. "You will have to let me undress you," the great lion says. And Eustace describes what happens next: the lion's claws cut so deep that the pain is worse than anything he has ever felt. It goes beyond the surface, past every layer he could have reached himself. When it is finished, Aslan throws the boy into clear water, and Eustace emerges with new, tender, human skin.

Lewis understood something every pastor sees in the counseling room and every believer knows in the mirror. We cannot peel away our own brokenness. We scratch at the surface — new habits, fresh resolutions, another self-help book — but the dragon goes deeper than our claws can reach. Real transformation requires a hand stronger and more loving than our own, a hand willing to cut all the way to the root.

The Almighty does not redecorate our lives. He remakes them. And yes, it hurts. But what emerges on the other side is the person we were always meant to be.