The Deeper Claws of Grace

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard with greedy thoughts in his heart — and wakes up transformed into a dragon himself. His selfishness has finally made him on the outside what he always was on the inside. Eustace tries desperately to shed the dragon skin, peeling it off layer after layer with his own claws. Each time he thinks he has reached the boy underneath, he looks down and finds another layer of scales.

Then Aslan appears. "You will have to let me undress you," the lion says. And Aslan's claws cut so deep that Eustace thinks they have gone straight into his heart. It hurts worse than anything he has ever felt. But when Aslan is finished, Eustace is a boy again — thrown into clear water, made new, restored.

Lewis understood something that every pastor sees in the counseling room and every believer discovers in prayer: we cannot restore ourselves. We can scratch at the surface of our brokenness. We can modify behaviors and make resolutions. But the dragon skin goes deeper than our own claws can reach.

Restoration is the work of God — and it is rarely painless. The Almighty peels back what we cannot peel back ourselves. He reaches the places we have protected for years. But on the other side of that painful grace, we find ourselves made whole again, washed clean, finally free to be who He created us to be.