Many of us have loved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the rest of the Narnia series of fantasy books by C.S. Lewis for so long we just assume they have always existed and were inevitable.  Behind the books, however, is a story of the fight to get them written.  The partnership between Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien is widely known, but less known is that one of the reasons Lewis had trouble writing Narnia was discouraging objections from his friends.  One said that “the children wearing fur coats since it seemed an endorsement of the fur trade and the murder of all the innocent animals needed to make such a coat,” while Tolkien himself criticized the story for not fitting the conventions of the genre.

In the article linked here and below, Harry Lee Poe, a professor at Union University, shares these stories and more about how Lewis persisted in writing and “experienced a renewal of his imaginative power.”  Each of us is a marvelous work of a powerful Creator, designed to represent Him in this world.  As you read the article, “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24).  Is there a world of Narnia trying to come out of each of us?

(Estimated reading time 7 minutes)

I discovered this article through fellow blogger Barbara Harper, who posts a weekly list of good reads on Saturday.

https://www.crossway.org/articles/the-birth-of-narnia-and-why-tolkien-hated-it/