A great Christian writer that most of you know wrote a brilliant children's fantasy called "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." C.S. Lewis tells the story of a great Lion whose roar shakes the very foundations of the forest. At the beginning of the book four children are playing in their uncle's wardrobe when they discover it's a doorway to Narnia. As they enter Narnia they learn it is under the spell of a wicked witch. It is a depressing land. Lucy, the youngest of the four, says that in Narnia under the witch it is always winter but never Christmas.

The children hear rumors that Aslan, the great Lion, will soon return to the forest so they devise a plan to overthrow the witch. But chaos enters in when the younger boy Edmund commits treason and joins the witch plunging all of Narnia deeper into the witch's spell. When Aslan returns he frees Edmund from the clutches of the witch.

I love what happens next. The witch requests an audience with Aslan and talks to him about the deep magic from the dawn of time. She says, and I quote, "You at least know the magic which the Emperor [that's God the Father] put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill."

Aslan agrees and Edmund is to be sacrificed on the Stone Table, a large ritual stone that has always been in Narnia. But then something unexpected and horrible happens. Aslan, at th elast moment, offers to be sacrificed in Edmund's place. The witch is delighted to be rid of Aslan once for all. He is bound, humiliated before the Witches entourage, and killed. It appears to the children that wickedness has won the day and that all is lost.

As the children tearfully leave the scene it is dawn. They hear a great cracking, a deafening noise. They rush back and find the great table split in two and Aslan gone. Suddenly he appears before them and as they shake in fear he explains to them "that though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she does not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the Dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

The meaning of the story is plain enough for all to see, a wonderful allegory of the fall of mankind and the redemption of the world. It is one of the best stories ever told because it tells of the worst in us, the best in us, and the grace offered to us all.