The Wardrobe Was Never the Point

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, four children stumble through an old wardrobe into a frozen world they never expected to find. But here is what strikes me every time I reread it — Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter did not go looking for Narnia. They were sent away from London during the Blitz, evacuated to a strange professor's house, feeling displaced and purposeless. Lucy wandered into the wardrobe almost by accident, hiding during a game of hide-and-seek.

Yet Narnia had been waiting for them. The prophecy of four thrones at Cair Paravel existed long before they arrived. Aslan had already set events in motion. What felt to them like aimless wandering was, from Narnia's perspective, the fulfillment of an ancient design.

This is how the Almighty so often works in our lives. We feel displaced. We feel like we are just stumbling through doors, not sure where we belong. But God has been preparing a place for our gifts, our experiences, even our wounds, long before we arrive. As Jeremiah heard the Lord say, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart."

Your purpose is not something you manufacture. It is something you walk into — sometimes through the most unexpected doors. The wardrobe was never the point. The throne was.