The Marsh-Wiggle Who Stomped Out the Fire

In C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, there is a scene that has stayed with readers for generations. The heroes — Jill, Eustace, Prince Rilian, and a gangly, pessimistic creature named Puddleglum — are trapped underground by the Queen of Underland. She lights an enchanted fire and begins strumming a mandolin, filling the room with sweet, heavy smoke. Slowly, she persuades them that there is no sun, no Narnia, no Aslan. Everything they love and believe in, she whispers, is just a children's fantasy.

One by one, they begin to forget. The spell nearly wins.

Then Puddleglum — the least heroic figure in the room — stamps out the fire with his bare, webbed foot. The pain clears his mind, and he speaks the words that shatter the enchantment: "Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one." He declares that even if Aslan and the Overworld were only a dream, he would rather spend his life searching for them than accept the darkness she is selling.

Courage is not always the absence of doubt. Sometimes it is the choice to stand on what you know to be true when every voice around you insists it is a fantasy. The Apostle Paul knew this when he wrote, "We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:18). Faith does not wait for certainty. Like Puddleglum, it stomps on the fire and chooses the light.