The Dragon Skin That Only a Lion Could Remove

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, his heart full of greed. When he wakes, he has become a dragon — his inner nature made visible in scales and claws. At first he tries to fix himself. He scratches at the dragon skin, peeling it away layer by layer. But each time he removes one layer, another waits beneath it. His own effort is never enough to reach the boy buried underneath.

Then Aslan, the great lion, comes to him in the night. "You will have to let me undress you," Aslan says. And his claws cut far deeper than Eustace's ever could. It hurts terribly. But when Aslan tears away the final layer and plunges him into a pool of clear water, Eustace emerges as a boy again — restored, tender-skinned, and changed.

Every one of us has tried to peel away our own dragon skin. We make resolutions. We try harder. We promise to be better. And for a while the surface looks clean, but underneath there is always another layer we cannot reach on our own.

Restoration is not a self-help project. It is a surrender. The prophet Ezekiel understood this when God declared, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you." The Almighty does the work that our own hands cannot. It hurts. It goes deep. But what emerges on the other side is the person we were always meant to be.