Sometimes Revival Looks Like This

This story is from C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia....


There was a young boy named Eustace. He was thoroughly selfish and unpleasant, especially to his cousins, who had been to Narnia and had met Aslan.

As it happened, he was, through no action of his own, cast into one of their adventures and landed on an island with them and Prince Caspian and his men.  He refused to do any work, demanded great sacrifices of others, and bullied even little Reepicheep, the brave and courtly Chief Mouse.

It was on this island that Eustace's nastiness caused him to be turned into a dragon, a large and ugly dragon.

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. When he awoke he realized he was a monster cut off from the whole human race. An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see that others had not really been fiends at all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such  nice person as he had supposed...When he thought about this the poor dragon who had been Eustace began to weep.

He knew he had to remove the dragon skin and somehow shake it off. He was certain that then he would find Eustace underneath all the ugly greenish scales and knobbly bits.

He was able to remove one layer, but found there was another layer underneath. Beneath that was another layer. He despaired as he kept laboring. There seemed to be no end to the layers.

Aslan approached the miserable boy and lifted up his great fearsome claws.It wasn't just the dragon layers that had to come off -- even the skin underneath had to be removed.....

Later Eustace described the experience:

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worst than anything I've ever felt...there it was lying on the grass; only ever so much thicker and darker and more knobbly than the top layers had been.

And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeling switch and smaller than I had ever been. Then he caught hold of me--I didn't like that very much. I was very tender underneath now that I had no skin on----and threw me into the water. It was smarting like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain was gone.