The Marsh-Wiggle's Wager

In C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, the Green Witch tries to enchant Puddleglum and the children into believing that the Overworld — the sun, Aslan, Narnia itself — are all made-up fantasies. She nearly succeeds. Her enchanted fire fills the room with drowsy sweetness, and her soothing voice almost convinces them that the dark Underworld is all there is.

Then Puddleglum, that gloomy, pessimistic Marsh-wiggle, does something extraordinary. He stamps out the enchanted fire with his bare foot, and through the pain, he speaks one of the most profound declarations of faith in all of literature: "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones."

He declares he will live as a Narnian even if there is no Narnia.

That is faith. Not certainty free from doubt, but a choice to trust what you have glimpsed of the good and the true, even when the world insists it is fantasy. The writer of Hebrews called it "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

There will be seasons when the enchantment of despair grows thick, when voices whisper that everything you believe is wishful thinking. In those moments, stamp out the fire. Choose the sun you remember over the darkness you can see.