Serving the Good King

I recently pulled my copy of CS Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe off the shelf and read back over some of my favorite passages. There's one conversation in particular that I'm continually drawn back to:

"Is-is he a man?" asked Lucy.

"Aslan a man!" said Mr Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

I love this reminder of God's character. Sometimes the places in which we encounter God in the city are the most unlikely - often times they're not the most beautiful, the most clean or even the most safe, and the things we're asked to do might even be a bit risky. Perhaps, though, it's when we're away from some of that comfort that we're inclined to fine-tune our vision and our hearing to experience Him even more. Perhaps that's even when we see God working the most powerfully. Amazing how that works - is He safe? Maybe not. Is He good? Oh, yes... He's very, very good.

-Megan Breed, CSM Houston Associate City Director