Narnia: Beyond The Wardrobe Series

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – week 1

“Beyond The Wardrobe” (There is more to life than meets the eye)

2 Cor 4:18

Have you ever, on a clear starry night, when there are little lights to crowd the view, lay on your back and looked up into the heavens and thought, wow, there is more to this life than meets the eye. Have you ever looked across the ocean and see the sun setting low over the horizon, filling the sky with the most amazing colours and thinking, there is more to this world than meets the eye. Perhaps, if you have been in the most blessed situation to see your child in the first few seconds of it’s life, sucking that first few breathes and looked in awe and wonder and thought, wow, amazing, there must be more to this life than meets the eye.

When I was kid growing up I had a pet badger. I would play with it and it would go everywhere with me. I can’t remember if he had a name. But it was my pet badger and it lived in the lounge, and it made its home in a kitchen stool that I turned upside down. It was my best friend. It loved me, and I cared for it, I was about 3 years old. My sister had also had a best friend, hers was called Dobby. Whenever Sue went Dobby would go. Dobby didn’t live in a stool that was turned upside down in the lounge, but she was allowed upstairs in her bedroom. Cute thing was only I could see the badger and only Sue could see Dobby – I think that was fine too until one day when neither I nor Sue would get in the car to go on holiday because we couldn’t find the badger or Dobby. Sue cried her eyes out one day, because Dad shut Dobby’s arm in the car door. Now it seemed that it was fine having a pet badger when I was three years old, the world of imaginary pets and friends is fine, but when you are 45 and you tell people that you believe in something you can’t see, do they need to call the guys with the white jackets? When you say, I am staking my life on Jesus Christ, He is the source and meaning of life for me, both this life and the next, I am orientating my decisions, I choosing how I live my life on something I can’t see, touch, feel or point to, But I believe that he is all in all, is it time to say, get me out of here! Is there really something that significant, that life changing that can’t be seen, nevertheless, is still as real as what can be seen? Can I share a secret with you, but don’t tell anyone else, the badger now lives in my office in Ednall lane, under the desk, so if you come into my office and see biscuit crumbs on the floor you now know where they come from!

Today we start a short series on, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. What’s that about? On December 9th, Disney launches the movie series that they believe will be the biggest selling film they will ever have, it’s all about the C S Lewis books “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Why look at this? Because there is more to this book than meets the eye, it’s a story within a story. Just as our lives are a story within a bigger story, there is more than meets the eye in this book, and there is more to our life than meets the eye. It’s a story that been told since 1950 when it was written and over 85 million copies have been sold, but it’s also a story that has been told for 2000 years. It’s a story that involves you and me. It’s a story where there is more than meets the eye. I hope that you will go to see the movie, we are trying hard to be the first people in Bromsgrove to have the movie after it’s released from the cinema and we will show it here for free sometime in Feb/Mar 2006. Many of your friends who do not believe in Jesus will be going to see the movie, perhaps, perhaps there may just be a chance that over the next three weeks something we say could be a seed that you could plant in their minds and who knows what God could do – because there is always more to this life than meets the eye.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" follows the exploits of the four Pevensie Children -- Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter. They live in World War II England, and they are sent as evacuees away from the London to a large country home of a rather eccentric professor. There one day, when it is raining and as children often do, they get into mischief and there begins the most magical story. First Lucy, then the others are drawn by the light in the forest to discover that there is more than meets the eye when they decide to hide in a wardrobe. There was a whole other world just one step beyond the world that they could see, one step beyond the real, was another reality that existed. It was a land that was inhabited by talking beasts, dwarfs, fauns, centaurs and giants, but there was a land that had become cursed to always be in winter, but never to have Christmas by the evil White Witch, Jadis. In the world of Narnia there had been a prophesy that one day the spell of the white witch would be broken when four thrones would be filled. Could these be the people to fill those thrones? While sitting down to tea with some friendly beavers, the children hear of the Noble and Mystical ruler of Narnia, the lion Aslan.