Grace to the Common

I'm listening to the Chronicles of Narnia with my daughter every morning on the way to school.

We're right at the beginning, The Magician's Nephew.

It's actually been a pretty worshipful experience so far, but today I found myself getting a little frustrated. If you know the story, you know towards the end there's a cabbie and a horse that somehow get taken into Narnia.

Anyway.

Aslan chooses the cabbie to be the first king of Narnia and he chooses the horse to go on a special mission for Him, making the horse the first of the winged horses of Narnia. (There's a sentence I've never written before.)

What frustrated me was their voices.

The cabbie and the horse sounded so normal, so ordinary, so common. Here Aslan is choosing the cabbie and the horse to perform these noble, great, awesome tasks and the cabbie and the horse don't sound all that noble, great or awesome at all. They just sound common.

It didn't feel right.

And then I think I got it. It was right. It was a beautiful, moving picture of what God has done and is doing with us, with me. The ordinariness of the horse and the cabbie make the goodness of Aslan appeare all the greater, and my ordinariness does the same with God's grace.

Praise be to the God who chooses the foolish of the world to shame the wise, the weak of the world to shame the strong, the low and despised, the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of the Lord.