Aslan on the move

Aslan is on the move, my friend Rebecca says in an e-mail, and she may be right. We are not speaking of the Narnia movie opening December 9, nor of my second son whose middle name is that of the Christ-figure lion. Rebecca speaks allegorically.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it has been “always winter and never Christmas” for a bleak, cold age. And then there are rumours of wonders – wonders suggesting the life-giving, life-changing arrival of Aslan.

In our case, we have felt a restlessness for several years and it appears that Aslan – or more truly, Jesus – is on the move in our lives. May I tell you the story, in proper order?

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Once upon a time, about eight years ago, a woman had a baby and began to walk the streets of her neighbourhood with her infant in a stroller. People stopped and began to talk with her (babies are such magnets) and though she had slept in her house for three years, only then did she begin to truly live in her community.

Time passed and the woman and her husband had two more children, and she met more of their neighbours. She began hearing their stories: the man with thyroid cancer and deep anxiety, the woman whose internet boyfriend left her with a young child, the woman who biked her kids to school, the bachelor in the pink house who was addicted both to alcohol and peaches, the teacher struggling to know whether to return to her classroom or stay home with her kids, the artist painting glorious works.

The woman began to pray for her neighbours, to drop cookies off to their houses at Christmas or when they were sick. She began to picture a church where all these people would feel welcome, right in their neighbourhood. She began to imagine how God would work in their lives.

The woman hosted a party for her neighbours, and then a Bible study. She and her husband read books about reaching out in very natural ways to people around them. She attended a Board of Church Extension night (for she was, in fact Mennonite Brethren) and began to cry when the presentation featured a paraphrase of John 1:14: The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood.

She looked at the others in her church and had an epiphany: they were in their neighbourhoods, worshipping God and inviting others to join them. Only she and her husband drove to the other side of the city, away from the people of their neighbourhood. But she did it because she loved this church, its people, her friends. They had been the only church family her children had ever known.

At times, the woman became impatient, wanting God to act, wondering whether she should take matters into her own hands, get something started. Any attempts in this direction met with firmly closed doors. She explored a little, looking for a church that might fit these requirements, that might share or catch the vision she believed God had given her. There was nothing.

Then, the woman and her husband were told about a small church in their neighbourhood. They attended it, talked at length with its pastor. Again, the woman cried: this church had a burning desire to serve God and to reach people in the same neighbourhood, in intentional but ordinary ways.

The couple prayed, talked with trusted friends, felt the pangs of being uprooted and also a tremendous sense of God’s goodness and providential plans. They announced they were heading out to follow God in this new direction.

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I’m the woman in the story, of course, and I feel a bit like Abram, being asked to leave the safe and familiar for unknown lands. It’s easy to leave a church when things aren’t going well. But, although it’s harder to leave people you care about, it’s exciting to follow God’s leading.

Half my life ago, I stood up at an Urbana student missions conference to commit my life to serving God wherever He wanted me to go. (All I asked was that there be no poisonous snakes!) I firmly believe God is calling us to this neighbourhood – where there are no poisonous snakes and where, it seems, Aslan is on the move.

Susan Fish lives in Kitchener, Ont. She is the author of Seeker of Stars, a novella about one of the magi who also journeyed to unknown lands. (See review this issue.)