The Dragon Skin He Couldn't Remove

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart — and wakes to find he has become a dragon. The outer form has finally matched what was already growing inside him. Miserable and desperate to change, Eustace tries to fix himself. He scratches and peels away the dragon skin, layer after layer, and each time he thinks he's done, he finds another scaly hide underneath. His own effort is never enough.

Then Aslan comes. "You will have to let me undress you," the lion says. And his claws go deeper than Eustace ever dared go himself. It hurts — Lewis doesn't pretend otherwise. The first tear cuts so deep that Eustace thinks it has gone straight into his heart. But when it is finished, Aslan throws the boy into a well of clear water, and Eustace emerges restored, human again, tender-skinned and new.

This is the honesty of Scripture's promise. The Lord who "restores my soul" does not hand us a self-help manual and wish us luck. He does the work Himself — work that reaches deeper than our own hands can go. Restoration sometimes stings before it heals. But the One who tears away what we have become is the same One who remembers what He made us to be.