The Undragoning

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard and wakes to discover he has become a dragon himself. His greed has literally reshaped him. He is miserable, isolated, desperate to be restored.

Eustace tries to fix himself. He scratches at the dragon skin and peels it away, only to find another layer of scales beneath. He tears that off too. Again, scales underneath. No matter how many layers he removes, the dragon remains.

Then Aslan appears and says, "You will have to let me undress you." His claws cut far deeper than Eustace's own scratching ever could. The pain is real. But when the lion peels the final layer away, Eustace finds tender new skin beneath — human skin. Aslan throws him into a pool of water, and the sting gives way to relief. He is himself again.

Lewis understood something pastors see every Sunday morning: we cannot heal ourselves by our own effort. We scratch at the surface. We manage symptoms. We rearrange habits. But the wound underneath stays untouched because we are afraid to let anyone cut that deep.

The Almighty does not heal by leaving us comfortable. He heals by reaching the place we have protected for years and saying, "Let Me take this from you." The deeper the cut, the more complete the restoration.

True healing begins the moment we stop scratching and surrender to the Healer.