The Fairytale Gospel

Within each of us is a world of wonder waiting to be unleashed.

A fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorry and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of the deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The beast turns into royalty.

The frog turns into a prince.

The lonely Cinderella finds love.

The tin man gets a heart, the scarecrow a brain and the lion finds courage.

In every fairytale you see a character wrestle with the tension of the world around them not matching the world they know is within them. But then someone, some sort of guide, enters into their story and serves as a catalyst that unleashes the world within the character that was waiting to be set free.

I bet that there is a reason that fairytales evoke something within us.

Because within each of us is a world waiting to be set free.

There is a world of wonder and whimsy and beauty that we feel within us. Yet, the world around us often can feel at war attempting, and sometimes succeeding, at drowning out the world within us. Ever been there?

This is why I think the Gospel can, in a sense, feel like a fairytale. It’s the good news that our Guide, Jesus, has come and that even in a world of chaos that wonder is still possible.

That beasts can still turn into royalty.

Frogs can still turn into princes.

Cinderella’s can still find love.

A tin man can get a heart.

The scarecrow can get a brain.

The cowardly lions can discover courage.

And the world within you can begin to shape and transform the world around you.

If the Gospel is a sort of fairytale then maybe that is why our Guide did not tell us that we need to have the mind of an archaeologist but instead we are to have the faith of a child in order to unleash the power of this story.

2 Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. 3 Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. 4 So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. — Matthew 18:2–4