The Marsh-Wiggle Who Stamped Out the Lie

In C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, there is a scene that has stayed with preachers and readers for generations. Deep underground, the Green Witch has cast an enchantment over the children and their companion, a gangly, pessimistic creature called Puddleglum. With sweet-smelling smoke and a hypnotic voice, she slowly convinces them that there is no sun, no Narnia, no Aslan — that only her dark underground kingdom is real.

One by one, they begin to give in. The memories of everything bright and true start to dissolve like morning fog.

Then Puddleglum does something no one expects. He stamps his bare foot into the enchanted fire. The pain clears his mind, and he speaks words that could be the creed of every believer who has ever wrestled with doubt: "Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one... We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow."

That is faith. Not the absence of doubt, but the refusal to let doubt have the final word. It is stamping your foot on the cold floor of your darkest season and saying, "I have tasted something real, and I will not be talked out of it."

Hebrews 11:1 tells us faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Sometimes faithfulness means trusting what the light revealed, long after the darkness has settled in.