The Lion Who Was Not Safe

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children hear about Aslan for the first time and ask Mr. Beaver a question that has echoed through Sunday school classrooms for decades: "Is he safe?" Mr. Beaver's answer cuts straight to the heart of what it means to follow God: "Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."

That single exchange captures something we often struggle with in the life of faith. We want a God who makes everything comfortable, who smooths out the road ahead before we take a single step. But the God of Scripture — the same God who called Abraham out of Ur, who sent Moses back to Egypt, who asked a teenage girl in Nazareth to carry the Savior of the world — has never promised safe. He has promised good.

Courage is not the absence of trembling. It is taking the next step while your knees are still shaking, because the One who calls you forward is trustworthy even when the path is not predictable.

Lewis understood this because he lived it — a confirmed atheist who followed the evidence toward a God he did not want to find, and then spent the rest of his life helping others do the same.

The Almighty does not ask us to be unafraid. He asks us to trust that He is good — and to walk forward anyway.