“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The
sun was shining outside and through the crack at
the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From
where I stood that beam of light, with the specks
of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in
the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black.
I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my
eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture
vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no
beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny
at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the
branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd
million miles away, the sun. Looking along the
beam, and looking at the beam are very different
experiences.”[i]
-C. S. Lewis
Do you find wonder when you read fantasy and myths? This wonder we feel (as opposed to the mere intellectual appreciation of the story) in good myths and fantasy comes from this idea that the story becomes a way to see the bigger realities behind it. In the words of author John Hendrix, a well-written myth “remains as that tiny portal of wonder.”[ii]
But few of us think of history in this way.
Studying history tends to get reduced to a dull academic exercise. Or worse, to a tool to be wielded to advance personal or political agendas. But I like history because of its power to be that tiny portal into the larger life beyond this life.
US president and author Theodore Roosevelt wrote a wonderful essay about “the poetic historian.” This is a person who understands the spiritual drama unfolding in history, and tries to highlight it for others in writing about events. The poet historian tries to find the meaning behind an event in the past. Roosevelt wrote that such a person has “the power to embody ghosts, to put flesh and blood on dry bones, to make dead men living before our eyes. In short, he must have the power to take the science of history and turn it into literature.”[iii]
The poet-historian is the creator of legend. The power of the poet-historian is in finding the meaning behind events, seeing the beautiful reality behind the lives that traipse over history’s stage, and turning them into legends that echo God’s story.
J. R. R. Tolkien wrote that “things do not become legendary unless they are common and poignant human experiences first.”[iv] Legend always has its beginning in history.
And there is a reason for this. History is a story written by God. If we praise great mythmakers like Tolkien and Lewis for their creative works of sanctified imagination that imitate the Creator’s creativity, surely it should come as no surprise that the Creator himself can make even better stories. Some point out that the best stories echo God’s wonderful metanarrative of salvation. This is another way to say that the best stories act as Lewis’ toolshed sunbeam: they show off the actual story of Christ’s epic work for our salvation.
Do you know that, similarly, we can see that kind of metanarrative echo in how God writes on human lives? That is, we can see the story of Christ again and again in our reading of history. This, of course, presupposes the Biblical truth that God is completely sovereign over human lives. There is not an event in the past that does not bear His holy handprint. It’s because of that truth that we can legitimately look for meaning in the lives of those who have gone before us.
Francis Shaefer, in commenting on those endless genealogical lists of names we encounter in the book of Genesis, says: “Thus the flow of history continues. History comes from someplace. History is going somewhere. We are not born without a background. And there is a solution to the dilemma of man in the midst of history.”[v]
Make it a new goal as you read about the lives and deeds of people in the past to see in their heroism and honor, their horror and hilarity, the work and person of Jesus. He is the glorious Hero of history; the One who writes all our stories; the Lover every soul spends their story in these Shadowlands-filled-with-sunbeams hoping one day to get more than a glimpse of.
[i] http://ktf.cuni.cz/~linhb7ak/Meditation-in-a-Toolshed.pdf
[ii] Hendrix, John. The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien. 187
[iii] Roosevelt, Theodore. History as Literature.
[iv] Tolkien, J. R. R. “Battle of Maldon” notes, p. 73
[v] Schaefer, Francis. Genesis in Space and Time (complete works, Vol 2). p 112-113
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