Disclaimer: Not as dark as the title sounds, I promise. Inspired a bit by the sermon today, and a bit by the desire to see the world made well.

This is a very old story. It is the same as every other story, but I've never found that matters. So pay careful attention. The story begins the same way all stories begin: good existed, and evil wanted it. Why? Because evil cannot create. It cannot make anything new; it merely twists what is good until it is good no longer. And Narnia, at its creation, was very good. There was a twist in it at the very beginning, but not a large one. And that is an important point of the story. For to have a twist at all means one of two things must happen: it must be straightened, or it turns the whole story bent. And this evil ran away, ran far away, and the Narnians were so occupied with the good that they forgot about the evil, until the day it came back.

What did it do when it came back? What evil always does. It took the good things and killed them, changed them, or imprisoned them. And it tried very, very hard to make all things twisted until no straight things remained-but they failed. Would you like to know why they failed?

Because Aslan loved Narnia, and so He Himself came to make it straight again. And He gathered all the straight things left, drawing them to Himself, and made them straighter and stronger, and He took many crooked things, and with gentle paws made them straight again. And the things that bent away from Him and would not turn back, He destroyed. Then He made two Kings and two Queens who would not bend, and gave them all the straight things, so they could do what He had done-make them straighter and stronger. And so all good things flourished for another time.

That is every story. Sometimes Aslan comes Himself and sometimes He sends those He loves, but in every story, there is a good thing, and evil hates it, and evil must be fought. Even when it looks like it's winning.

So we, too, have to remember what it's like to be strong and straight and never become crooked. And even when it looks like the whole world is turning bad, we must never follow it. Good will come again some day.

And now, that's enough for this evening. Go to bed, Trufflehunter. I'll see you in the morning.