Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Good Morning! 

 

Sorry I didn't send anything out yesterday -- I was under the weather.

 

Starting today on our Narnia study.  We had three study guides that I was able to find after scouring the book stores -- the rest were backordered and should be here by Wednesday.  As you might imagine, there has been quite a run on Narnia related studies, etc.

 

Based on our discussions this past Sunday, we thought that we would try to arrange a class trip to see the movie after church on Sunday, December 11.  That is opening weekend of the movie.

 

This is going to be a short study, and I think the idea here is that this is a chance for us to study a story that is another telling of the Christian story.  C.S. Lewis (or Jack, as his friends called him), was one of the greatest contemporary Christian writers and essayists.  He more or less stumbled into the idea of writing a children's novel, which turned into several novels.  Even less planned was the Christian nature of the story, which just initially worked into his story on its' own, to hear Lewis describe it.

 

I think what we will get out of this is a new perspective on the Christian story; a new way to see how our faith life might live out in our own lives, and an appreciation of how to see the story of Christ in other stories from other writers.

 

Overview:

 

I know that some folks have read the book, some haven't, and some read it sometime ago.  So I thought we would start today with just a brief overview of the story.

 

The movie is based on the book "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe"., which is the first of seven books that Lewis wrote in what became known as the Chronicles of Narnia.  During the Second World War, when children from London were being evacuated to the country, four youngsters were billeted at Jack's home, the Kilns. Surprised to find how few imaginative stories his young guests seemed to know, he decided to write one for them and scribbled down the opening sentences of a story about four children -- then named Ann, Martin, Rose and Peter -- who were sent away from London because of the air raids, and went to stay with a very old professor who lived by himself in the country.

That's all he wrote at the time, but, several years later, he returned to the story. The children (now named Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) found their way into another world -- a land he would eventually call Narnia.  He published The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950, and published the last of the seven books in 1956.

 

The following link to a Wikipedia entry will take you to a kind of Cliff Notes version of the book, which will give you either a refresher course on the book's plot or a quick first overview.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion%2C_the_Witch_and_the_Wardrobe

 

The official website of the film is at www.narnia.com.

 

Today's prayer request:      Christie and Andrew Peebles

 

Christie told us on Sunday that she and Andrew were pregnant again, about eight weeks+.  She said that the ultrasound looks good.   We need to pray that they have a problem-free pregnancy.

 

Today's class member prayer: 

 

Lynn Rocksvold

 

Have a great day.

 

Jay