The Only Stream

In C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, there is a scene that stops me every time I read it. Jill Pole arrives in Aslan's country, parched and desperate for water. She finds a stream — clear, cold, exactly what she needs. But the great Lion is lying right beside it.

She is terrified. She asks Aslan to promise he won't do anything to her. He refuses. She asks if he eats girls. "I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," he answers. Jill stands frozen. "I daren't come and drink," she whispers. "Then you will die of thirst," Aslan replies. Desperate, she tries one last escape: "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."

And the Lion speaks the line that has haunted readers for seventy years: "There is no other stream."

That is the shape of trust. We come to God thirsty and afraid. We want guarantees before we approach. We want a manageable deity, a safe transaction. But the Living God is not safe — He is good. And there is no other stream. No alternative source of living water. No backup plan that satisfies.

Trust is not the absence of fear. Trust is walking toward the stream while your knees are still shaking, because you know the Lion beside it is the only one who can quench what you thirst for.