The Deeper Claw

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a boy named Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's treasure hoard and wakes to discover he has become a dragon himself. His greed has quite literally consumed him. Desperate to be free of his scales, Eustace scratches at his own skin, peeling away one layer after another. Each time he thinks he has broken through, he finds yet another layer of dragon beneath.

Then Aslan appears. "You will have to let me undress you," the great Lion says. And Aslan's claws go deeper than Eustace ever dared go himself. Lewis writes that the first tear was so deep that Eustace thought it had gone right into his heart. It hurt worse than anything he had ever felt. But when Aslan was finished, the dragon skin lay in a heap on the ground, and Eustace was thrown into a pool of clear water — stinging at first, then wonderfully cool — and he emerged a boy again.

This is how the Almighty so often heals us. We try our own remedies first. We scratch at the surface of our wounds with self-help strategies, positive thinking, and sheer willpower. And we do make some progress. But the deepest layers — the shame, the bitterness, the fear we have carried for years — those require a hand stronger and more tender than our own. Healing that reaches the heart will sometimes hurt before it restores. But the One who wounds is the same One who makes us whole.