In one of his most beloved books for children, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis write about one character in particular who undergoes transformation unlike any other in the story.Eustace, a rather spoiled and selfish child, is cousin to the main characters Lucy and Edmond. On their journey across the ocean with a crew of mythical people and creatures, the ship reaches a island where they dock and stay for a few days before continuing their voyage. Eustace, inflamed that he doesn't get his way on the trip, decides to leave the crew and explore the island. Soon into his exploration, he looses his way within the foggy woods and becomes bewildered.
He finds a dragons cave and climbs in, only to find, not a dragon, but gold and treasure! Greedily, he hoards it for himself. Sitting upon the mountain of treasure, he falls fast asleep, worn out from his exploration. He, then, wakes up later to find himself changed magically by his greedy heart into a dragon.
Perplexed and doomed to live the rest of his life alienated on an island as a dragon, all hope for Eustace seems lost...until he meets Aslan, a mysterious lion who possesses divine-like authority in every story of the Chronicles of Narnia.
Eustace the dragon is terribly afraid of the lion, though he obeys him when the lion tells him to undress himself from his skin. As he scratches off his scales and skin, he is crushed to find layers of skin and scales underneath. He cannot change who he is on his own. Later Eustace recalled:"Then the lion said --but I don't know if it spoke-- You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down and my back to let him do it.
"The very first tare he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt."
...And that's what did it for Eustace. He became a boy again and who he was on the inside was transformed.
In Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, the character Aslan is symbolic of the Judeo-Christian God. In each of our personal lives, we have or we will come to realize that we can't save ourselves from our own sin. We can change who we are. It takes God the Father, through the work of his Son
and ministry of the Holy Spirit, to tare away the dragon skin of our hearts and give us new life. It may hurt to reveal all of who you are to God, but until you do, you're never free.
