I think one of the most powerful passages in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe occurs after the great lion, Aslan, is killed by the White Witch in place of the traitorous fourth Pevensie child, Edmund. In the midst of their mourning for him, Lucy and Susan hear the stone table breaking in two behind them and find Aslan alive once again.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.”
Now, I’m fully aware that there is no such thing as magic, but I like the implications of that line. “There is a magic deeper still.” Deeper than the Witch’s hate or the strength of her stone knife. Deeper than Edmund’s spite, and jealousy, which caused the whole mess in the first place. Aslan was stronger than all of that. He wrote the Deepest Magic. He was the deepest magic.
Sometimes I wonder if Satan thought he was winning that day that Jesus died. I know the high priest and the Romans did. Which also leads me to wonder – what exactly where they thinking when the sky went dark in the middle of the day, the ground started shaking, and the dead rose out of their graves?
It didn’t seem like it that day when they crucified Him, but Jesus was stronger than the priests’ jealousy, Pilate’s carelessness, or the Roman’s cruelty. He was even stronger than the so-called “prince of this world” (Satan). He, like Aslan, is the deepest magic. He gave life to the tree which would become His manger, but also the one which would become His cross. He knew, on the morning that He breathed life into the lungs of humanity, that we would one day try to take His own breath from Him.
I say “try” because nothing can destroy the Breath of God. That same essence of life which filled the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision returned to its Master three days after He died. As I sit here outside of Taylor University’s prayer chapel on a sunny day one week after Easter, I know that there are a million more things I could say on this subject. But I think that this poem I wrote a few days ago says it all perfectly.
Once upon a time,
A long, long time ago,
A King began to walk a road,
The cost – only He could know.
A hard, stony, and arduous track,
The very air bled His tears,
But still He paved this wilderness way
For those who would follow in coming years.
With every toiling step,
And every bleeding scar,
He beat back the thorny brush
Which had been allowed to grow this far.
And so in days to come
When others would follow this way,
They would never have to fear the darkness,
For His light had won the day.
A deep magic growing colder
Bent starless night to its will,
But cries the dawn as it rises,
“There is a magic deeper still.”
