I remember finding some old black and white photos of my parents. They were just kids in the photos. In one, Mom leans over a rail, bright-eyed and eager, flanked by a batch of other kids. In another, Dad poses by his model train set, clearly feeling the imposition of having his picture taken. He rests on the carpet in a white tee shirt, his chin on his hands, and tries to smile. I remember filing through picture after picture and assuming that my parents grew up in a flat, black and white world. My parents had difficulty convincing me that their world was as bright and translucent as my own.
My childhood perception did not match reality, but the consequences were benign. The consequences for two disciples on their way to Emmaus, however, was immediate and unfortunate. Bedraggled, huddled, and grieving, they were unable to see past their present circumstances. The eyes of their souls were darkened by grief and bewilderment. When Christ joined them on their walk, they could not see him for who he was. Even though they heard Mary and Joanna exclaiming that the tomb was empty that very morning and even though they heard Peter verify the facts, still they conversed and reasoned on these things and were sad. Christ bemoaned their stunted spiritual vision, saying to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” He then “expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27), beginning at Moses and the prophets.
Still, would you believe it, they did not see him for who he was. Even when Christ untangled the Scriptures for them, they did not see until he blessed and broke the bread just as he had done a few nights before. Then Luke says, “their eyes were opened and they knew him.” These two disciples knew the Scriptures and they loved Christ, but their spiritual vision was unhealthy. We also have difficulty seeing beyond our vision and in this way, the disciples are our modern predecessors.
The revelation of Christ, as prefigured in the Old Testament and incarnated in the New Testament, was and is a matter of spiritual sight. The word “revealed” carries with it a sense of unveiling, of peeling open the eyelids to see. The two disciples walking to Emmaus could see but their spiritual sight was restrained (Luke 24:16) and so Christ remained unrevealed until he snapped their imaginative stupor by breaking the bread. Until that moment, they could not perceive reality.
Imagine this:
Jill, poor Jill. Stranded in a hard land with hard companions, she remembered what Aslan told her: “Whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs…Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly; I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind.”
Well, here she was hungry, lost, and confused. Her companions, Eustace and Puddleglum, were irritable and irritating. She missed Aslan’s warmth and strength and clarity. She missed his thick main and hot breath. His words, though dim, still wandered the hallways of her mind: “And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances.”
Pay no attention to appearances.
Signs? “You must journey out of Narnia to the north till you come to the ruined city of the ancient giants.” That was the second sign. The third: “You shall find writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you.”
Whatever.
The north wind slapped their cold cheeks. The road led through narrow valleys that channeled the wind straight into them. Their feet were raw because the ground was stony, and they woke up sore after sleeping all night on lumps of frozen earth. Puddleglum was tired of Eustace, Eustace was tired of Puddleglum, and Jill was tired of them both.
Finally, when hopelessness had rooted out all their resolve to remember the signs that Aslan gave, they stumbled out of a gorge and onto a desolate plain. Behind them rose the mountains through which they had wandered. Beyond the rocky plain rose snow-capped mountains. In the middle of the plain was a low hill with a strange flat top and on top of that hill winked welcoming lights.
They camped within sight of the hill that night and set off for it in the morning. Mid-morning, however, snow started to fall. They had to pick their way through rubble and between boulders. The snow by now was thick like a veil over their eyes, and they had to squint just to see a few paces ahead. When they reached the foot of the hill, they thought they saw squarish rocks on either side, but a four-foot-tall wall blocked their path and they had to scramble over its snow-covered ledge. After that ledge, they stumbled onto another and then another and another: four ledges all told and each ledge at quite irregular intervals. The top of the hill was filled with more strange shapes and ruts. They were soaked to the bone when Jill fell down a small ravine and found herself in a channel tucked beneath the blowing wind and snow. Eustace followed her down and out of the storm. The pair wandered straight, took a right, then another right, but that right came to a dead end. They retraced their steps to the last turn and took a right which led to another right turn. Finally, after much slipping and passing through similar channels, they found themselves before an enormous castle: the source of the winking lights.
Those who know this story remember the castle of the Gentle Giants and all that transpired there. We will focus on what they saw the next morning when they looked out one of the windows high up in the castle. The sun was shining, the snow melted by a night of rainfall, and they saw stretched out before them a ruined city still paved rather flat. Over that pavement was etched the words UNDER ME.
Revelation.
“What I don’t quite understand,” said Jill, “is how we didn’t see the lettering ? Or could it have come there since last night. Could he—Aslan—have put it there in the night?”
“Why you chump!” said Eustace. “We did see it. We got into the lettering. Don’t you see? We got into the letter E in ME. That was your sunk lane. We walked along the bottom stroke of the E, due north.” He turned to Jill. “I know what you were thinking because I was thinking the same. You were thinking how nice it would have been if Aslan hadn’t put the instructions on the stone of the Ruined City till after we’d passed it. And then it would have been his fault, not ours. So likely, isn’t it? No. We must just own up.”
Yes, we must simply own up. This portion of the The Silver Chair illustrates a spiritual state many of us recognize. Many of us are cold, tired, and bewildered. The winds slap our cheeks and we have nothing with which to stay warm—nothing lasting at least. Our feet are sore and we sleep restlessly, tossing and turning on the hard lumpy surface of our thoughts. Worst of all—worse than being muddled and confused—is the tiring effort required to push each other over all of these life barriers.
The story also exposes our spiritual myopia. We squint through the storms of life but lack the imaginative power to see anything more than what is right in front of us. We seem unable to see even the present for what it is. In our haste to pass through the present trial, we lack the awareness to see what God is telling us right now. We stand neck deep in the ravines of God’s fingerprint, but lack the imaginative vision to see it. As a result, our spiritual lives are truncated, our souls are calcified, and our vision is murky at best. “We, who are too blind to read what we have written, or what faith has written for us, do not understand; we only blink, and wonder” (Edwin Arlington Robinson).
Our current spiritual journeys are short, cautious stints because our spiritual myopia hinders our progress. What Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum lacked, we also lack. We lack a healthy imagination. Their journey might have met with greater success had they seen the barriers for what they were: the letters of a divine message. We also might meet greater success if we could align our spiritual vision, our imagination, with God’s ability to see the barriers in our lives.
