Bravery and courage these are such weighty words. Indeed they are not terms I would use to describe myself. When I think of bravery, I think of knights in armour, clad for battle, unwavering before the storm that assails them. Courage seems to be the trait of those who wander far off lands in search of the lost, wounded and broken.
Me? I am often afraid. Full of doubt. I question myself, my abilities, my calling and if I have heard God correctly. I frequently wonder what I could be thinking and who am I to contemplate the thing set before me.
A while back I wrote a post about a vision that God had given me of a well that he was asking me to jump into (if you haven’t yet read it you can do so here). It was a picture of how scary it can be to attempt the thing that God sets before us but also a promise of what happens when we do.
Someone once told me that courage is not the absence of fear. It is being afraid and choosing to act. It is looking the thing in front of you in the face and doing it anyway. Those words gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, I was not as timid as I feared.
Just a few days ago, I was praying about something that I was feeling deeply conflicted about. During that time of prayer, I realised that most of those feelings were coming from a place of fear. Fast on the heels of that realisation, these words came into my mind,
‘Courage, dear heart’
This is not the first time God has spoken these particular words to me. They are found in the fifth book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In this book, Lucy and Edmund (from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) find themselves on a ship, and not just any ship, but that of Caspian, King of Narnia. Towards the end of the book, they find themselves sailing to an island where nightmares come true. All hope appears lost, and any escape seems impossible.
Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting top and whispered, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.” The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little – a very, very little – better. “After all, nothing has really happened to us yet,” she thought.
“Look!” cried Rynelf’s voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched, a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight…
Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard… no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis
When I hear these words, everything shifts. As I hear the whisper of the Spirit fear subsides. My mind and my heart still. I find that I am where I have always been, safe in the hands of my Father. Held by my Saviour. And that which seemed so unimaginable just moments before suddenly might just be possible (for further discussion on the impossible see this post).
Dear Father, thank you that you speak exactly the words we need to hear when we need to hear them. May you breathe your courage and your life into each of us today that we might be able to do that which you have placed before us. Amen
Has God spoken words like these to you before? What do you do when you are frozen by fear? What is your favourite book from the Narnia series? And your favourite C.S. Lewis quote?
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