A playful romp with God
Growing up, I never heard a word about God laughing, joking, or doing anything for fun.
Every few years, I return like a wanderer coming home to a scene in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Aslan has just come back to life after being killed by the wicked White Witch. Although the majestic lion’s resurrection foreshadows the novel’s happy ending, the land of Narnia is in immediate peril. War is ravaging the land, Aslan's faithful followers are dying, and the White Witch is gleefully certain that she has triumphed over her enemy. It is a dire moment.
And at this dire moment, Aslan takes a break from the solemn business of world-saving to play a rousing game of tag. “Oh children,” he shouts to the kids who have witnessed his resurrection, “I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh children, catch me if you can!” And off he goes, leading them on an exhilarating, joy-filled chase through the hills until they finally collapse “in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs.” “It was such a romp,” Lewis writes, “as no one had ever had except in Narnia.”
The first time I encountered this scene—as an adult, reading the Narnia books to my own kids—I cried. The possibility that God might laugh, romp, and play with his children stopped me in my tracks. How could such a scandalous thing be true?
