The Silver Chair - C.S.Lewis

We're reading The Chronicles of Narnia as a family and I'm finding deep insights I somehow missed as a child when my parents read them aloud to us.  Maybe they're like any really good allegory, they fit on many levels and they grow with you.
We just completed The Silver Chair.  I didn't have an attachment to this book in particular, but this time around it seemed to have a lot to say to me.  I'd like to record a few of my thoughts and musings from this reading of it.

Jill and Eustace have called on Aslan asking if they can go to Narnia.  When Jill meets Aslan a few moments later and he is talking about the task for which he called her, she responds, "I was wondering--I mean--could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know.  It was we who asked to come here.  Scrubb said we were to call to--to Somebody--it was a name I wouldn't know--and perhaps the Somebody would let us in.  And we did, and then we found the door open."
     Aslan's response is, "You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you."
And how precious it is that our LORD is calling to us! and we have the privilege of responding by calling on Him!

Then they find themselves in Narnia and are ushered into the castle.  "Supper in the great hall of the castle was the most splendid thing either of them had ever seen;..."  This second chapter ends with this paragraph:  "When they were dragging themselves upstairs to bed, yawning their heads off, Jill said, 'I bet we sleep well tonight,' for it had been a full day.  Which just shows how little anyone knows what is going to happen to them next."

The journey their assignment took them on was arduous and uncomfortable.  It was a reminder that our comfort isn't the issue at stake, it is the call to bring glory to God and to serve Him and His Kingdom that shapes our lives.  

Later in the book as the evil enchantress is working her magic and trying to deceive them, I saw interesting parallels to the deceptions of worldly philosophies that currently pervade our culture questions about what is real and what is true.  The deceit was so subtle and they were vulnerable to it.  It took pain and intense struggle to wrench them back to reality and truth. 

I highly recommend these books!  They are full of spiritual insights!