The Marsh-Wiggle's Defiance

In C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, there is a scene that every pastor should know. The heroes — two children and a gangly, web-footed creature named Puddleglum — have journeyed deep underground to rescue a captive prince. But the Green Witch begins weaving an enchantment. She throws a sweet powder on the fire, strums a hypnotic instrument, and speaks in a voice smooth as silk: there is no sun, no Narnia, no Aslan. Everything they believe in is just a dream, a children's game.

And it nearly works. The children's minds go foggy. The prince wavers. The whole room tilts toward surrender.

Then Puddleglum — gloomy, awkward, unlikely Puddleglum — stamps his bare foot into the enchanted fire. The pain clears his head. And he says something extraordinary: even if all of it were make-believe, the made-up world of Aslan and the sun is better and more important than anything in the Witch's dark kingdom. He would rather live as a Narnian even if there is no Narnia.

That is what faith looks like on its hardest days. Not a feeling. Not certainty delivered on a silver tray. Faith is the deliberate choice to stand when every voice around you says sit down. It is planting your feet — even when it costs you — and declaring that the God you cannot see is more real than the darkness you can.