Eating with New Eyes

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third book in C. S. Lewis’  The Chronicles of Narnia series you have a nasty little boy named Eustace. Lewis describes him like this: "His name was Eustace Clarance Scrubb and he almost deserved it.”  Anyway, as nasty a boy as Eustace was, he does find redemption in the book, of which we are all very glad, but that story will be told elsewhere. 

What concerns us today is something that happens during the journey of the ship, The Dawn Treader. Eustace doesn’t sign up for this journey that results in his redemption, rather, he is sort of swept up into it because he is with his cousins, Lucy and Edmund. After they had been on the Dawn Treader quite a while, and after Eustace is amazingly changed by Aslan, the Christ figure of the story, we see in this scene he still has much to learn.The three cousins are on an island when they meet a person named Ramandu. He is quite mysterious and tells them that he is a retired star. He is on this island actually resting and in his words "...when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again (for we are at earth’s eastern rim) and once more tread the great dance."  It is all quite mysterious but it is Eustace who shows he has a long way to go in the redemptive process. He says to Ramandu, "In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."Ramandu, very graciously but firmly says to him, "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.” That is a profound statement and summarizes what we will be talking about Sunday when we conclude our discussion on food. If you only think of food as calories, you really need to come. What we will see, from both the Old and New Testament, past and future, is that while food is fuel and necessity, if that is all you see, you need to learn to "eat with new eyes!"Skeptical? I hope to see you Sunday and open your eyes just a little bit to a larger world of glory, beauty, and mystery.Blessings,Jim