Just shortly after I started this blog, while I was writing about Snow White, I pulled out my copy of “The DaVinci Code” and popped it into the player. I watched and scrutinized it with my skeptic mind as the story made it’s way through clues and puzzles and dangerous moments. The story finally wraps up. The prime character, Doctor Robert Langdon, makes his way to the glass pyramid at the Louvre, having discovered for himself the final resting place of the Lady Magdalene. The camera sweeps over the image of the sarcophagus, the stone image on the lid looking like...
I’m sorry, I laughed out loud! There it was! Sleeping Beauty! “There she sleeps beneath the starry skies.” Oh my goodness, the whole thing, the premise for this story was -- a fairy tale. A woman forced to flee into the wilderness. The woman pained to be delivered of a child. The true bride, awaiting her handsome prince to come and rescue her from obscurity. The whole book and movie was nothing but a complicated, glorified fairy tale. Go! Watch it! See for yourself. All the elements of the fairy tale are there retold in a modern setting with a conspiracy twist.
But only men conspire. God does not. He simply reveals His truth to those who will listen with humble hearts. And His truth isn’t earth shattering. It’s heart breaking. God’s people have broken hearts and contrite spirits.
I really do like fairy tales. I like authors who take fairy tales and write novels, like Robin McKinnely’s “Beauty” or Shannon Hale’s “The Goose Girl.” And I love the beautiful picture books, like “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” as told by Marianna Mayer and Illustrated by K.Y. Craft. They all evoke a something in me - a longing and a yearning. Sometimes I think I’m yearning for my own mortal prince. I think what I’m really yearning for is - home.
This is the promise of our fairy tales, of The Book of Revelation and it’s themes of redemption and restoration. We all are on a sojourn through this sea of mortality. We want to go home to that heavenly realm of absolute peace and love and rest.
I believe that is why these stories have endured through the dark ages, the age of enlightenment and reason, the industrial revolution and the information age. They are indeed sacred stories. The divine never dies.
We gave these stories over to our little children and perhaps that will be our salvation. Children still believe, they have faith, they play dress up and slay dragons. They are keeping these sacred stories safe for us. I think that’s the right place for them - for now. After all...
“Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.
Next week: One more fairy tale.
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