Good Friday Devotion: Through the Stable Door

[Scriptures from the English Standard Version]

From The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis (adapted)
“Sire,” Jewel said, “nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us. And if, by a great marvel, we defeat those thirty Calormenes who are with the Ape, then [we must] turn again and die in battle with the far greater host of them that will soon march from Cair Paravel.”

Light a candle.

Green book #4: Sing Praise to God, verses 1 & 2

Then came the worst part, the waiting. Luckily for the children they slept for a couple of hours, but of course they woke up when the night grew cold, and what was worse, woke up very thirsty and with no chance of getting a drink. But Tirian, with his head against Jewel’s flank, slept as soundly as if he were in his royal bed at Cair Paravel, till the sound of a gong beating awoke him, and he sat up and saw that there was firelight on the far side of the stable and knew that the hour had come.

John 17:1, 5
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you….And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

From The Last Battle:
“Listen,” he whispered in a matter-of fact voice, “we must attack now, before yonder miscreants are strengthened by their friends.”
“Bethink you, Sire,” said Poggin, “that here we have the good wooden wall of the stable at our backs. If we advance, shall we not be encircled and get sword-points between our shoulders?”
“I would say as you do, Dwarf,” said Tirian. “Were it not their very plan to force us into the stable? The further we are from its deadly door, the better.”

Tirian could hear [the dwarfs] using dreadful language, and every now and then the Tarkaan calling, “Take all you can alive! Take them alive!”
Whatever that fight may have been like, it did not last long.
“Throw them into the shrine of Tash,” said Rishda Tarkaan.
And when the eleven Dwarfs, one after the other, had been flung or kicked into that dark doorway and the door had been shut again, he bowed low to the stable and said:
“These also are for thy burnt offering, Lord Tash.”

“I feel in my bones,” said Poggin, “that we shall all, one by one pass through that dark door before morning.”
”It is indeed a grim door,” said Tirian. “It is more like a mouth.”

“Oh, can’t we do anything to stop it?” said Jill in a shaken voice.
“Nay, fair friend,” said Jewel, nosing her gently. “It may be for us the door to Aslan’s country, and we shall sup at his table tonight.”

Hymn: Green Book #4: Sing Praise to God, verses 3 & 4

From The Last Battle:
And now the leveled spears were closing in on Tirian and his friends. Next minute they were all fighting for their lives….The worst of it was that Tirian couldn’t keep to the position in which he had started….he soon found that he was getting further and further to the right, nearer to the stable. He had a vague idea in his mind that there was some good reason for keeping away from it. But he couldn’t now remember what the reason was. And anyway, he couldn’t help it.

Read John 18:28-30, John 19:15-18, Luke 23:39-43

From The Last Battle:
All at once everything came quite clear. He found that he was fighting the Tarkaan himself. The bonfire, what was left of it, was straight in front. He was in fact fighting in the very doorway of the stable, for it had been opened and two Calormenes were holding the door, ready to slam it shut the moment he was inside. He remembered everything now, and he realized that the enemy had been edging him to the stable on purpose ever since the fight began.

And while he was thinking this he was still fighting the Tarkaan as hard as he could.

A new idea came into Tirian’s head. He dropped his sword, darted forward, seized his enemy by the belt with both hands, and jumped back into the stable, shouting:
“Come in and meet Tash yourself!”

There was a deafening noise. As when the Ape had been flung in, the earth shook and there was a blinding light.

Matthew 27:50-51
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

Green book #18: And Can It Be That I Should Gain

Blow out the candle.