Thick air

"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" (The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis).

The mountain is my morning Bible study. The drop to Narnia is life as I find it the rest of the day, and the air gets thick indeed. Some things are not going at all as I think they should go if God is in his heaven and I am his child. He seems to contradict his own Word.

Some have had it worse than I. What would you do if the voice of God told you to kill your son? This is the murkiest scene of all. Not only because He is requiring the death of the apple of your eye. Not only because this is the son of promise. But because the request goes against everything you know about God's character. Honestly, I think if I were Abe I would have replied to the command, "Get thee behind me! I know the voice of Satan when I hear it!"

This is all the ammunition scoffers need: "See! It's all a swindle! Where is your God!"

Here, then, is the great divide. The believer, facing the same dark cave as the Nikabriks, proceeds with faith worn down to the metal. This is faith reduced to one part confidence and 99 parts willpower. He says, even now I will trust in God. And because, in the end, there are no words of life to be found elsewhere, he says through his exhaustion, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15).