One of the most quoted lines in all the Chronicles of Narnia is easier said than believed.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. This is Breakpoint.

One of the most beloved and quotable scenes in all of the Chronicles in Narnia comes from the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.

When the children learn that Aslan is a lion, the great lion.

Ooo, says Susan, I thought he was a man, is he quite safe?

I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.

Safe, said Mr. Beaver, who said anything about safe?

Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you.

Although we love this idea that God is good but not safe, we often live as if our safety and comfort marks the boundaries of our

relationship with him. Catechized as we are by maybe bad theology or our culture's

enabling of our self-centeredness or being weary of our angry and

fractious age many Christians simply cannot conceive that God's will for our lives

could possibly involve anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.

But when it does, and our expectations collapse, we wonder if God even cares.

And we're quick to conflate God's faithfulness with a painless placid life of blessing and provision.

We assume that pain or discomfort means that God's will has somehow been thwarted or that his

love and protection have been withdrawn from us.

It's difficult to accept that the presence of pain rather than being a sign of God's

absence is actually a sign of his sovereign care. Throughout another book in the Narnia

series, The Horse and His Boy, Azlan continually inflicts fear, hardship, even physical pain on the main characters.

When Shasta, one of the two main humans in the story, is fleeing from his abusive adoptive father on the Narnian horse Brie, a lion chases them through the darkness.

Fleeing from the danger, he encounters another rider, also fleeing, it seems, another lion.

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