When the Dragon Skin Had to Be Torn Away

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 find he has become a dragon himself. His selfishness and greed have taken visible, scaly form. Desperate to be free, Eustace tries to peel the skin off himself. He scratches and tears, and a layer comes away — but underneath, there is always another layer of scales. He tries again and again, but he cannot go deep enough.

Then Aslan comes. The great Lion tells Eustace to lie down, and He begins to tear the dragon skin away with His own claws. Eustace later says, "The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart." It hurts far worse than anything Eustace did to himself. But when Aslan is finished, He throws the boy into a pool of clear water, and what had been agony becomes relief. Eustace emerges with soft, human skin again — tender and new.

This is how healing often works in the hands of the Almighty. We try to fix ourselves — peeling back one habit, one grudge, one fear — only to find another layer beneath. Real healing requires a touch deeper than we can reach on our own. It may hurt more than we expected, because God does not work on the surface. He goes straight to the heart.

But what He tears away, He replaces with something new.