The Dragon Skin That Had to Be Torn Away

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a selfish 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 literally consumed him, reshaping him into the very thing he worshipped. Desperate and miserable, Eustace tries to fix himself. He scratches at the dragon skin, peeling it away in layers — but underneath each layer lies another. No matter how hard he claws, he cannot reach the boy beneath.

Then Aslan, the great Lion, appears. "You will have to let me undress you," he says. And his claws cut far deeper than Eustace's ever could. It is agonizing. But when Aslan tears away the final layer and plunges Eustace into a pool of clear water, a boy emerges — tender-skinned, vulnerable, and finally free.

Lewis understood something profound about restoration. We cannot peel away our own ruin. We try — we make resolutions, turn over new leaves, scratch at the surface of what has gone wrong — but the damage runs deeper than our own claws can reach. True restoration requires a hand stronger and sharper than our own, and it rarely comes painlessly.

The prophet Ezekiel saw the same truth centuries earlier: "I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Restoration is not self-improvement. It is surrender to the One whose wounds make us whole.