Narnia Painting, Through the Wardrobe, Psalm 91

Narnia Painting by Kristina Elaine Greer

Through the Wardrobe!
Capturing the Magic of Childhood Adventure


A new painting by Kristina Elaine Greer captures the magic of a journey to Narnia!

Narnia was born in troubled times. As the Nazis bombed London and children were being evacuated to the countryside, two girls came to stay with “the professor” C. S. Lewis at ‘The Kilns.’ One day Lewis found one of the girls playing in a wardrobe and the inspiration was planted. Lewis would weave his own journey to faith into the stories of this magical world, inspiring generations to follow. During the great war he would produce a series of talks for the BBC about faith that gave hope and comfort to a people besieged. Later those talks would become the basis for his book: Mere Christianity. This work, compiled by a layman, is considered one of the great works of Christian Apologetics. Now Kristina Elaine Greer, in a new painting of Narnia, brings the wonder of this world to a new generation!


Aslan!


























Can you find a reference to each of the Narnia Chronicles in the painting?

Further Up and Further In
[click to read]

Tearfully, she held the family photo close and remembered the happy times. Indeed, there had been joyous times with her three siblings in their small London home. Then followed the terrible sirens and explosions. Neighbors perished and gaping holes smouldered in once-quiet neighbourhoods. The evacuation came next, which meant leaving Mum and Dad behind; we siblings boarded a train and headed for the safety of the countryside and extended family. (read more)

He was Sowin’ Love
By Bob Kirchman


“I don’t hide from you that I don’t detest the countryside — having been brought up there, snatches of memories from past times, yearnings for that infinite of which the Sower, the sheaf, are the symbols, still enchant me as before.” (Letter 628 to his friend and painter Émile Bernard, on or about June 19, 1888).

Vincent Van Gogh, Le semeur (The Sower), Mid-June 1888. Oil on canvas, 64 x 80,5 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum,The Netherlands

There seem to be two distinct personalities in our community of faith. On the one hand there is the person who simply “picked up the Bible and read it, finding between its covers the answers for life.” They tend to speak a lot at conferences. Then there is the person who is probably more like most of us, struggling to read through Scripture, often struggling to stay awake reading “through the Bible in a Year,” but getting little from it. Let’s be brutally honest. Some of us can quote Bible passages and recite the stories by rote. But where, if we may ask, is the “change” that it should bring in our lives? If you are in this category, you’ve probably never been invited to speak at a conference. But this is not a criticism of different personalities. It is a great place to ask the question “What do you see when you look at the Bible?” There is no wrong answer, but this is simply an invitation to look deeper into the writing with the goal of getting to know the Writer.

Indeed, there is a danger in simply knowing the text well. My reasoning runs along the lines of the study of immunology. Suppose you want to keep someone from getting a terrible disease. You give them a weakened or less harmful variant of the pathogen that could harm them. Edward Jenner in the eighteenth century gave non-fatal cowpox injections to people to protect them from smallpox, which was a more dangerous variation of the bovine disease. So with Scripture, the girl who simply picks up a Bible, knowing very little about it, reads for meaning and discovery. She is seeking. She will find. On the other hand, the guy who has been better taught might think he’s heard it all. He already knows what it says so he tunes out the process of discovery. For him it never becomes more than review.

All of which brings me to a wonderful daily devotional by Bishop Robert Barron on an old, well known story from Mark 4:1-20 – “The Sower and the Seed.” Most of us raised in the church know the story from memory. A farmer scatters his seed on good soil, rocky soil, amid thorns and even upon the path. Most people present that story and immediately go into a discussion of the meaning of the different types of soil. They are analogous to the relative conditions of our hearts. We hear the message and apply the different soils symbolically to ourselves. We quietly flag the need to consider the condition of our own hearts. We take in the message: “Prepare your heart.” It is a good message. But is it the real message Jesus meant to tell us? 

When Jesus told the story, he was telling it to a group of people who very likely were farmers themselves. Farmers don’t like to waste precious seed, and here’s a guy throwing seed EVERYWHERE! To a man of the soil it seems extravagant – yea even wasteful. But remember here that Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God! Here is God Himself, the extravagant Sower! He gives Himself not only to those ready to respond, but to those who might be hard, those who might be least likely (in our human thinking) to respond. Bishop Barron writes: “God’s love is irrational, extravagant, embarrassing, unreasonable, completely over the top.” The question I must ask now is if I am adding something to Scripture that isn’t there. It is a valid question and in answering it one might turn to the other parables.

The Prodigal Son is an obvious next stop in our journey. We all know the story – one of two sons asks for his inheritance while his father is still alive. The son squanders his fortune and starves. He returns to his home, hoping to be accepted as a servant. His father welcomes him with great rejoicing! But what of the subject here is the extravagant love of the father! He’s so much in love with his sons – both of them, that he is willing to forgive what in the culture of the day must have been a terrible insult! He’s standing out where he can see someone’s approach from quite a distance! He see’s his lost son approaching. He RUNS to meet him! Remember that those who heard Jesus were in some cases landowners. They would have flinched at the insult and subsequent squandering of the family fortune – but they would have really squirmed at the telling that the father never stopped looking for the son who had declared him dead. Extravagant love! That is the message too big to get a handle on. But there is more! The lost sheep, the lost coin, the field containing great treasure; It is in the parables that Jesus hides the great recurring message of God’s extravagant love. It is here that we get a glimpse of just how much we are loved. Remember when you were younger and were writing and receiving letters from a special person. You’d scour them to find the expression between the lines. You hoped they cared as much for you as you cared for them! There would emerge thoughts they shared that created a connection that was nothing short of magical. So it is with the thoughts and phrases deliberately placed in Scripture. But you have to read them with the hope of discovery. You cannot read them as a simple list of examples to follow. You have to look for the heart of the writer! In doing so, will you apprehend the scale of God’s love for you? I write this with a prayer that you will.

I use to love to walk behind my daddy
As he plowed our garden every spring
Our little bare feet in the dirt would make me happy
As we talked about what harvest time would bring.
He’d say son this whole world is like a garden
And what you sow your surely gonna reap
Where bitter seeds are planted hearts will harden
But a caring hand will make the harvest sweet.

And he was sowin’ love for the family
Yeah, he was sowin’ love, he took a little extra time
Lookin’ forward to a bountiful harvest
Like a good father does he was sowin’ love.

And how I use to love and sit and watch my momma
Workin' with her needle and her thread
So patiently she’d listen to our problems
And we knew she heard every word we said.
She'd say “Children this old world is full of scratches
And in your life your bound to have a few.”
I guess that's why the good Lord gave us patches
So we could start each day out feelin’ new.

Yes, she was sowin’ love for the family
She was sowin’ love, she took a little extra time
Lookin’ forward to a bountiful harvest
Like a good momma does she was sowin' love.
– Paul Overstreet, Sowin’ Love

Hope and Promise for Our Troubled Times


Doves. Detail of a Mural by Kristina Elaine Greer and Bob Kirchman

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my G-d; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation. 
– PSALM 91

Page One | Page Two | Page Three
[Click to Read]

An Opportunity to Learn, Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis: Mere Christianity

A Word for Our Time

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: "Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents."

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors - anaesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

- C.S. Lewis

Coronavirus and the Sun
[click to read]

A Lesson from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might help us now. (read more)

Mere Christianity
[click to read]

The contents of this book were first given on the air, and then published in three separate parts as The Case for Christianity (1943), (*) Christian Behaviour (1943), and Beyond Personality (1945). In the printed versions I made a few additions to what I had said at the microphone, but otherwise left the text much as it had been. A "talk" on the radio should, I think, be as like real talk as possible, and should not sound like an essay being read aloud. In my talks I had therefore used all the contractions and colloquialisms I ordinarily use in conversation. In the printed version I reproduced this, putting don't and we've for do not and we have. And wherever, in the talks, I had made the importance of a word clear by the emphasis of my voice, I printed it in italics. (click to read)

Page One | Page Two | Page Three
[Click to Read]

Narnia Painting, Through the Wardrobe, Psalm 91

Narnia Painting by Kristina Elaine Greer

Through the Wardrobe!
Capturing the Magic of Childhood Adventure


A new painting by Kristina Elaine Greer captures the magic of a journey to Narnia!

Narnia was born in troubled times. As the Nazis bombed London and children were being evacuated to the countryside, two girls came to stay with “the professor” C. S. Lewis at ‘The Kilns.’ One day Lewis found one of the girls playing in a wardrobe and the inspiration was planted. Lewis would weave his own journey to faith into the stories of this magical world, inspiring generations to follow. During the great war he would produce a series of talks for the BBC about faith that gave hope and comfort to a people besieged. Later those talks would become the basis for his book: Mere Christianity. This work, compiled by a layman, is considered one of the great works of Christian Apologetics. Now Kristina Elaine Greer, in a new painting of Narnia, brings the wonder of this world to a new generation!


Aslan!


























Can you find a reference to each of the Narnia Chronicles in the painting?

He was Sowin’ Love
By Bob Kirchman


“I don’t hide from you that I don’t detest the countryside — having been brought up there, snatches of memories from past times, yearnings for that infinite of which the Sower, the sheaf, are the symbols, still enchant me as before.” (Letter 628 to his friend and painter Émile Bernard, on or about June 19, 1888).

Vincent Van Gogh, Le semeur (The Sower), Mid-June 1888. Oil on canvas, 64 x 80,5 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum,The Netherlands

There seem to be two distinct personalities in our community of faith. On the one hand there is the person who simply “picked up the Bible and read it, finding between its covers the answers for life.” They tend to speak a lot at conferences. Then there is the person who is probably more like most of us, struggling to read through Scripture, often struggling to stay awake reading “through the Bible in a Year,” but getting little from it. Let’s be brutally honest. Some of us can quote Bible passages and recite the stories by rote. But where, if we may ask, is the “change” that it should bring in our lives? If you are in this category, you’ve probably never been invited to speak at a conference. But this is not a criticism of different personalities. It is a great place to ask the question “What do you see when you look at the Bible?” There is no wrong answer, but this is simply an invitation to look deeper into the writing with the goal of getting to know the Writer.

Indeed, there is a danger in simply knowing the text well. My reasoning runs along the lines of the study of immunology. Suppose you want to keep someone from getting a terrible disease. You give them a weakened or less harmful variant of the pathogen that could harm them. Edward Jenner in the eighteenth century gave non-fatal cowpox injections to people to protect them from smallpox, which was a more dangerous variation of the bovine disease. So with Scripture, the girl who simply picks up a Bible, knowing very little about it, reads for meaning and discovery. She is seeking. She will find. On the other hand, the guy who has been better taught might think he’s heard it all. He already knows what it says so he tunes out the process of discovery. For him it never becomes more than review.

All of which brings me to a wonderful daily devotional by Bishop Robert Barron on an old, well known story from Mark 4:1-20 – “The Sower and the Seed.” Most of us raised in the church know the story from memory. A farmer scatters his seed on good soil, rocky soil, amid thorns and even upon the path. Most people present that story and immediately go into a discussion of the meaning of the different types of soil. They are analogous to the relative conditions of our hearts. We hear the message and apply the different soils symbolically to ourselves. We quietly flag the need to consider the condition of our own hearts. We take in the message: “Prepare your heart.” It is a good message. But is it the real message Jesus meant to tell us? 

When Jesus told the story, he was telling it to a group of people who very likely were farmers themselves. Farmers don’t like to waste precious seed, and here’s a guy throwing seed EVERYWHERE! To a man of the soil it seems extravagant – yea even wasteful. But remember here that Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God! Here is God Himself, the extravagant Sower! He gives Himself not only to those ready to respond, but to those who might be hard, those who might be least likely (in our human thinking) to respond. Bishop Barron writes: “God’s love is irrational, extravagant, embarrassing, unreasonable, completely over the top.” The question I must ask now is if I am adding something to Scripture that isn’t there. It is a valid question and in answering it one might turn to the other parables.

The Prodigal Son is an obvious next stop in our journey. We all know the story – one of two sons asks for his inheritance while his father is still alive. The son squanders his fortune and starves. He returns to his home, hoping to be accepted as a servant. His father welcomes him with great rejoicing! But what of the subject here is the extravagant love of the father! He’s so much in love with his sons – both of them, that he is willing to forgive what in the culture of the day must have been a terrible insult! He’s standing out where he can see someone’s approach from quite a distance! He see’s his lost son approaching. He RUNS to meet him! Remember that those who heard Jesus were in some cases landowners. They would have flinched at the insult and subsequent squandering of the family fortune – but they would have really squirmed at the telling that the father never stopped looking for the son who had declared him dead. Extravagant love! That is the message too big to get a handle on. But there is more! The lost sheep, the lost coin, the field containing great treasure; It is in the parables that Jesus hides the great recurring message of God’s extravagant love. It is here that we get a glimpse of just how much we are loved. Remember when you were younger and were writing and receiving letters from a special person. You’d scour them to find the expression between the lines. You hoped they cared as much for you as you cared for them! There would emerge thoughts they shared that created a connection that was nothing short of magical. So it is with the thoughts and phrases deliberately placed in Scripture. But you have to read them with the hope of discovery. You cannot read them as a simple list of examples to follow. You have to look for the heart of the writer! In doing so, will you apprehend the scale of God’s love for you? I write this with a prayer that you will.

I use to love to walk behind my daddy
As he plowed our garden every spring
Our little bare feet in the dirt would make me happy
As we talked about what harvest time would bring.
He’d say son this whole world is like a garden
And what you sow your surely gonna reap
Where bitter seeds are planted hearts will harden
But a caring hand will make the harvest sweet.

And he was sowin’ love for the family
Yeah, he was sowin’ love, he took a little extra time
Lookin’ forward to a bountiful harvest
Like a good father does he was sowin’ love.

And how I use to love and sit and watch my momma
Workin' with her needle and her thread
So patiently she’d listen to our problems
And we knew she heard every word we said.
She'd say “Children this old world is full of scratches
And in your life your bound to have a few.”
I guess that's why the good Lord gave us patches
So we could start each day out feelin’ new.

Yes, she was sowin’ love for the family
She was sowin’ love, she took a little extra time
Lookin’ forward to a bountiful harvest
Like a good momma does she was sowin' love.
– Paul Overstreet, Sowin’ Love

Hope and Promise for Our Troubled Times


Doves. Detail of a Mural by Kristina Elaine Greer and Bob Kirchman

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my G-d; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation. 
– PSALM 91

Page One | Page Two | Page Three
[Click to Read]

The Redemptive Power of Story, Lewis and Tolkien

Volume XX, Issue XIII: The Power of Story

The Redemptive Power of Story
By Bob Kirchman

It has been very difficult, to say the least, watching so much of the America I grew up in crumble. It is easy to despair. Indeed, my default was trending towards escapism and simply forgetting the world around me – but then I remembered the message of Louis Markos in his book On the Shoulder of Hobbits. In a world that has lost its rudder, Markos presents “Stories to Steer By.” Remembering that J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis lived through the horrors of trench warfare in World War I; the almost certain destruction of Britain by the National Socialist regime of Germany during World War II, and that Lewis and Tolkien both lamented the discarding of noble ideals by modern thinkers, Markos leads us very deliberately on the path that both authors sought to take us on back to those very values. The tales of Narnia and Middle Earth lead us to the great virtues of Courage, Love, Temperance, and Friendship – usually not included in such lists of virtues, but essential in that we understand that the Divine has created man for no less than relationship with Him!

The noble quest, the heroic journey, springs to life before us. There is in Frodo Baggins the immediate need to dispose of the evil ring of power but as Frodo meets displaced elves making their way to the Grey Havens a deeper quest is revealed – that of Abraham in Hebrews 11: 10: “For he looked for a city which hath foundations, who’s builder and maker is God.” The hobbits, Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, are swept into a mission greater than themselves. Likewise, Shasta in The Horse and His Boy senses a pull to a country he has never seen and yet is his true home. So with Reepicheep the mouse, who initially thinks no more of the heroic victory but when we meet him in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader he is a mouse on a far greater mission – to set foot in Aslan’s Country!

And so On the Shoulder of Hobbits presents a map for our journey in this life as we seek to redeem our culture, but it goes further, giving us a peek at the ultimate fulfillment of those virtues which guide us in our Heavenly Home.



Redemptive Stories for Today


Christina Fougnie in Clancy.

Film is often seen as the modern vehicle for story today. Many lament that the movies made by Hollywood are often dystopian threads of antihero themes. The ‘Christian’ genre is often dismissed as ‘second rate’ and prone to didacticism. Yet there are some notable storytellers in the indie Christian film world who are indeed taking the path of the redemptive journey. In Louisville Kentucky, filmmakers Jefferson Moore and Kelly Worthington have done just that with their studio, Kelly’s Filmworks [click to visit]. A recent project they collaborated on was Clancy, in which Moore stars along with Christina Fougnie in a film that is reminiscent of Haley Mills’ Tiger Bay. Both films feature an unlikely friendship, a heroic quest, and a redemptive story that rises out of the dark and present situation the characters find themselves in. Both films have quite a bit of suspense and the actors do a great job of bringing the audience into their redemptive struggle.


The 'Redemptive Journey' in Clancy.

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[Click to Read]

C. S. Lewis's “Til We Have Faces” and “Four Loves”

Volume XX, Issue X: C. S. Lewis's “Til We Have Faces”

A ‘Novel’ Presentation of Great Truth

C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Abolition of Man in 1943. Subtitled “Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools,” it uses that as a starting point for a defense of objective value and natural law as well as a warning about the consequences of doing away with them. It should be required reading in light of today's cancel culture. It defends “man's power over nature” as something worth pursuing but criticizes the use of it to debunk values, the value of science itself being among them. The book was first delivered as a series of three evening lectures at King's College, Newcastle, part of the University of Durham, as the Riddell Memorial Lectures on February 24 to 26, 1943. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College, Presents a course on this book and its ‘novel’ companion, That Hideous Strength. Lewis knew the power of story as one who studied the great myths and found in them the presentation of great truths. He presents further great truths in his book The Four Loves and its ‘novel’ companion ‘Till We Have Faces.’

Til We Have Faces, A Myth Retold
[click to read]

By C. S. Lewis

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods. I have no husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew. Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain. That is, I will tell all he has done to me from the very beginning, as if I were making my complaint of him before a judge. But there is no judge between gods and men, and the god of the mountain will not answer me. Terrors and plagues are not an answer. I write in Greek as my old master taught it to me. It may some day happen that a traveller from the Greeklands will again lodge in this palace and read the book. Then he will talk of it among the Greeks, where there is great freedom of speech even about the gods themselves. Perhaps their wise men will know whether my complaint is right or whether the god could have defended himself if he had made an answer. I was Orual the eldest daughter of Trom, King of Glome. (read more)

Easy to Teach, Hard to Blog About
[click to read]

A Pilgrim in Narnia

Though I am always nudging readers to see The Great Divorce as C.S. Lewis’ most genius work of fiction, Till We Have Faces truly is a remarkable novel. It is the dying-days journal of Orual, Queen of Glome, who sues her capricious gods for their unfairness to her. The writing is elegant, the portrait is intimate, the transformational element is intricately tied to the psychological development in Orual’s tale, and the fictional world is complete. I know of many people who resist Lewis’ work, but admit that Till We Have Faces is among the 20th century’s important novels. (read more)



The Four Loves
[click to read]

By C. S. Lewis

God is love," says St. John. When I first tried to write this book I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject. I thought I should be able to say that human loves deserved to be called loves at all just in so far as they resembled that Love which is God. The first distinction I made was therefore between what I called Gift-love and Need-love. The typical example of Gift-love would be that love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother's arms. (read more)

Walt Disney and Robert Moses


Robert Moses and Walt Disney with a model of the 1964 Fair.

They were two visionaries – whose inspiration went far beyond their acknowledged ‘fields of expertise.’ They both built large, creating great works and some huge mistakes along the way. They both wanted to build something that would outlast them and they came together in the building of the 1964 World’s Fair.





 

Narnia Painting, Through the Wardrobe, Psalm 91

Volume XX, Issue V: Narnia Painting by Kristina Elaine Greer

Through the Wardrobe!
Capturing the Magic of Childhood Adventure


A new painting by Kristina Elaine Greer captures the magic of a journey to Narnia!

Narnia was born in troubled times. As the Nazis bombed London and children were being evacuated to the countryside, two girls came to stay with “the professor” C. S. Lewis at ‘The Kilns.’ One day Lewis found one of the girls playing in a wardrobe and the inspiration was planted. Lewis would weave his own journey to faith into the stories of this magical world, inspiring generations to follow. During the great war he would produce a series of talks for the BBC about faith that gave hope and comfort to a people besieged. Later those talks would become the basis for his book: Mere Christianity. This work, compiled by a layman, is considered one of the great works of Christian Apologetics. Now Kristina Elaine Greer, in a new painting of Narnia, brings the wonder of this world to a new generation!


Aslan!


























Can you find a reference to each of the Narnia Chronicles in the painting?

He was Sowin’ Love
By Bob Kirchman


“I don’t hide from you that I don’t detest the countryside — having been brought up there, snatches of memories from past times, yearnings for that infinite of which the Sower, the sheaf, are the symbols, still enchant me as before.” (Letter 628 to his friend and painter Émile Bernard, on or about June 19, 1888).

Vincent Van Gogh, Le semeur (The Sower), Mid-June 1888. Oil on canvas, 64 x 80,5 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum,The Netherlands

There seem to be two distinct personalities in our community of faith. On the one hand there is the person who simply “picked up the Bible and read it, finding between its covers the answers for life.” They tend to speak a lot at conferences. Then there is the person who is probably more like most of us, struggling to read through Scripture, often struggling to stay awake reading “through the Bible in a Year,” but getting little from it. Let’s be brutally honest. Some of us can quote Bible passages and recite the stories by rote. But where, if we may ask, is the “change” that it should bring in our lives? If you are in this category, you’ve probably never been invited to speak at a conference. But this is not a criticism of different personalities. It is a great place to ask the question “What do you see when you look at the Bible?” There is no wrong answer, but this is simply an invitation to look deeper into the writing with the goal of getting to know the Writer.

Indeed, there is a danger in simply knowing the text well. My reasoning runs along the lines of the study of immunology. Suppose you want to keep someone from getting a terrible disease. You give them a weakened or less harmful variant of the pathogen that could harm them. Edward Jenner in the eighteenth century gave non-fatal cowpox injections to people to protect them from smallpox, which was a more dangerous variation of the bovine disease. So with Scripture, the girl who simply picks up a Bible, knowing very little about it, reads for meaning and discovery. She is seeking. She will find. On the other hand, the guy who has been better taught might think he’s heard it all. He already knows what it says so he tunes out the process of discovery. For him it never becomes more than review.

All of which brings me to a wonderful daily devotional by Bishop Robert Barron on an old, well known story from Mark 4:1-20 – “The Sower and the Seed.” Most of us raised in the church know the story from memory. A farmer scatters his seed on good soil, rocky soil, amid thorns and even upon the path. Most people present that story and immediately go into a discussion of the meaning of the different types of soil. They are analogous to the relative conditions of our hearts. We hear the message and apply the different soils symbolically to ourselves. We quietly flag the need to consider the condition of our own hearts. We take in the message: “Prepare your heart.” It is a good message. But is it the real message Jesus meant to tell us? 

When Jesus told the story, he was telling it to a group of people who very likely were farmers themselves. Farmers don’t like to waste precious seed, and here’s a guy throwing seed EVERYWHERE! To a man of the soil it seems extravagant – yea even wasteful. But remember here that Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God! Here is God Himself, the extravagant Sower! He gives Himself not only to those ready to respond, but to those who might be hard, those who might be least likely (in our human thinking) to respond. Bishop Barron writes: “God’s love is irrational, extravagant, embarrassing, unreasonable, completely over the top.” The question I must ask now is if I am adding something to Scripture that isn’t there. It is a valid question and in answering it one might turn to the other parables.

The Prodigal Son is an obvious next stop in our journey. We all know the story – one of two sons asks for his inheritance while his father is still alive. The son squanders his fortune and starves. He returns to his home, hoping to be accepted as a servant. His father welcomes him with great rejoicing! But what of the subject here is the extravagant love of the father! He’s so much in love with his sons – both of them, that he is willing to forgive what in the culture of the day must have been a terrible insult! He’s standing out where he can see someone’s approach from quite a distance! He see’s his lost son approaching. He RUNS to meet him! Remember that those who heard Jesus were in some cases landowners. They would have flinched at the insult and subsequent squandering of the family fortune – but they would have really squirmed at the telling that the father never stopped looking for the son who had declared him dead. Extravagant love! That is the message too big to get a handle on. But there is more! The lost sheep, the lost coin, the field containing great treasure; It is in the parables that Jesus hides the great recurring message of God’s extravagant love. It is here that we get a glimpse of just how much we are loved. Remember when you were younger and were writing and receiving letters from a special person. You’d scour them to find the expression between the lines. You hoped they cared as much for you as you cared for them! There would emerge thoughts they shared that created a connection that was nothing short of magical. So it is with the thoughts and phrases deliberately placed in Scripture. But you have to read them with the hope of discovery. You cannot read them as a simple list of examples to follow. You have to look for the heart of the writer! In doing so, will you apprehend the scale of God’s love for you? I write this with a prayer that you will.

I use to love to walk behind my daddy
As he plowed our garden every spring
Our little bare feet in the dirt would make me happy
As we talked about what harvest time would bring.
He’d say son this whole world is like a garden
And what you sow your surely gonna reap
Where bitter seeds are planted hearts will harden
But a caring hand will make the harvest sweet.

And he was sowin’ love for the family
Yeah, he was sowin’ love, he took a little extra time
Lookin’ forward to a bountiful harvest
Like a good father does he was sowin’ love.

And how I use to love and sit and watch my momma
Workin' with her needle and her thread
So patiently she’d listen to our problems
And we knew she heard every word we said.
She'd say “Children this old world is full of scratches
And in your life your bound to have a few.”
I guess that's why the good Lord gave us patches
So we could start each day out feelin’ new.

Yes, she was sowin’ love for the family
She was sowin’ love, she took a little extra time
Lookin’ forward to a bountiful harvest
Like a good momma does she was sowin' love.
– Paul Overstreet, Sowin’ Love

Hope and Promise for Our Troubled Times


Doves. Detail of a Mural by Kristina Elaine Greer and Bob Kirchman

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my G-d; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation. 
– PSALM 91

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