Running Strong

I find it almost hard to believe a case must be made that the heart is . . . well, at the heart of it all.

Of life. Of God. And of Christianity.

But our Enemy has come against us, and now we are all in some way like the Tin Woodman. We, too, have suffered a series of blows over time. And we, too, have seized upon efficiency, busyness, and productivity as the life we will live instead.

Now we are lost. Dazed. Alert and oriented times zero. Sleepwalking through life.

In order to find our way out of those woods, we must return to the heart.

What small step can you take today on that return journey?

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 38-39)

On her journey down the yellow brick road – a journey, may I remind you, that grows more dangerous every step she takes – Dorothy meets a number of strange sights. She befriends the Scarecrow, and later the two of them come upon a lumberjack made of tin, standing utterly still in the forest, his ax frozen in midair.

At first, he seems unable to speak. Coming closer, they discover that he is trying to say something after all. Oil… can. After a bit more misunderstanding and misinterpretation, they get the oil can to the joints of his mouth, only to find that he can speak as well as any man, but that he was rusted.

Once he is freed from his prison, he begins to tell them his story.

Now the movie left out a crucial point, which the author gave in his original fairy tale. The Tin Woodman had once been a real man, who had been in love with a beautiful maiden. It was his dream to marry her, once he could earn enough money to build them a cottage in the woods.

The Wicked Witch hated his love, and she cast spells upon the man that caused him injury, so that one by one his limbs needed to be replaced with artificial ones, made of tin. At first it seemed an advantage, for his metal frame allowed him to work nearly as powerfully as a machine. With a heart of love and arms that never tired, he seemed sure to win.

Notice, there was a man who was once real and alive and in love. But after a series of blows, his humanity was reduced to efficiency. He became a sort of machine – a hollow man. At first, he did not even notice, for his condition made him an excellent woodman, as any person can become productive like a machine when he forgoes his heart.

Baum’s mythic tale reminds us that the Enemy knows how vital the heart is, even if we do not, and all his forces are fixed upon its destruction. For if he can disable or deaden you heart, then he has effectively foiled the plan of God, which was to create a world where love reigns. By taking our your heart, the Enemy takes out you, and you are essential to the Story.

You’ll notice he’s been rather efficient.

How’s your heart today?

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 36-38 )

You will not think clearly about your life until you “think 
mythically.” Until you see with the eyes of your heart. 



About halfway through their journey—following a great deal of hardship and facing a good deal more—Frodo’s devoted friend and servant, Sam Gamgee, wonders out loud: I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?

Sam is at that moment thinking mythically. He is wondering in the right way. His question assumes that there is a story; there is something larger going on. He also assumes that they have somehow tumbled into it; been swept up into it.

This is exactly what we’ve lost. Things happen to you. The car breaks down, you have a fight with your spouse, or you suddenly figure out how to fix a problem at work. What is really happening?

David Whyte says that we live our lives under a pale sky, the lost sense that we play out our lives as part of a greater story. 


What sort of tale have I fallen into? is a question that would help us all a great deal if we wondered it for ourselves.

After my friend Julie saw The Fellowship of the Ring, she turned to the girl with her and whispered, “We’ve just gotten a clearer view of reality than we usually see.”

Yes—that’s the kind of seeing we need; that is our reality.

What grabbed me was the theatrical trailer for the film. In a brilliantly crafted three-minute summary, the preview captures the essential mythic elements of the story. As scene after scene races before the eyes of the viewer, and a narrator describes the tale, these lines cross the screen: 



Fate has chosen him.

A Fellowship will protect him.

Evil will hunt him.

Yes – that’s it. That is the life Christianity is trying to explain to the world. Better, that is the reality into which Christianity is the door. If we could believe that about our lives, and come to know that it is true, everything would change.

We would be so much more able to interpret the events unfolding around us, against us. We would discover the task that is ours alone to fulfill. We would find our courage. The hour is late, and you are needed. So much hangs in the balance. Where is your heart?

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 34-35)




In this desperate hour we have a crucial role to play.

That is the Third Eternal Truth and it happens to be the one we most desperately need if we are ever to understand our days.

For most of his life, Neo sees himself only as Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer for a large software company. As the drama really begins to heat up and the enemy hunts him down, he says to himself, This is insane. Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I’m nobody. I didn’t do anything. A very dangerous conclusion… though one shared by most people today. What he later comes to realize later – and not a moment too soon – is that he is “the One” who will break the power of the Matrix.

Frodo, the little Halfling from the Shire, young and naive in so many ways, “the most unlikely person imaginable,” is the Ring Bearer. He, too, just learn through dangerous paths and fierce battle that a task has been appointed to him, and if he does not find a way, no one will.

Dorothy is just a farm girl from Kansas, who stumbled into Oz not because she was looking for adventure but because someone had hurt her feelings and she decided to run away from home. Yet she’s the one to bring down the Wicked Witch of the West.

Joan of Arc was also a farm girl, illiterate, the youngest in her family, when she received her first vision from God. Just about everyone doubted her; the commander of the French army said she should be taken home and given a good whipping. Yet she ends up leading the armies to war.

You see this throughout Scripture: a little boy will slay the giant, a loudmouthed fisherman who can’t hold a job will lead the church, and a whore with a golden heart is the one to perform the deed that Jesus asked us all to tell wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world (Mark 14:9).

Things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem.

Of all the Eternal Truths we don’t believe, this is the one we doubt most of all.

Our days are not extraordinary. They are filled with the mundane, with hassles mostly. And we? We are . . . a dime a dozen. Nothing special really. Probably a disappointment to God.

But as
C. S. Lewis wrote, The value of . . . myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by “the veil of familiarity.”

You are not what you think you are. There is a glory to your life that your Enemy fears, and he is hell-bent on destroying that glory before you act on it. This part of the answer will sound unbelievable at first; perhaps it will sound too good to be true; certainly, you will wonder if it is true for you. But once you begin to see with those eyes, once you have begun to know it is true from the bottom of your heart, it will change everything. 



You do have a crucial role to play. Don’t miss it.

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 33-34)

The Second Eternal Truth brought to us comes like a broken message over the radio or an urgent e-mail from a distant country telling us that some great struggle or quest or battle is well under way. May even be hanging in the balance.

When the four children stumble into Narnia, the country and all its lovely creatures are imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch and have been for a hundred years.

In another story, Jack and his mother are starving and must sell their only cow.

Frodo barely makes it out of the Shire with his life and the ring of power. In the nick of time he learns that Bilbo’s magic ring is the One Ring, that Sauron has discovered its whereabouts, and that the Nine Black Riders are already across the borders searching for the little hobbit with deadly intent. The future of Middle Earth hangs on a thread.

Darth Vader just about has the universe under his evil fist when a pair of droids fall into the hands of Luke Skywalker. Luke has no idea what is unfolding, what great deeds have been done on his behalf or what will be required of him in the battle to come. Sitting in a sandstone hut with old Ben Kenobi – he does not know this is the great Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi – Luke discovers the secret message from the princess, This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

Again, this is exactly what the Scriptures have been trying to wake us up to for years. Wake up, O sleeper . . . Be very careful, then, how you live . . . because the days are evil (Eph. 5:14–16).

Or as The Message has it: So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

Christianity isn’t a religion about going to Sunday school, potluck suppers, being nice, holding car washes, sending our secondhand clothes off to Mexico.

This is a world at war.

Something large and immensely dangerous is unfolding all around us, we are caught up in it, and above all we doubt we have been given a key role to play. Do you think I’m being too dramatic? 



Consider the tale in Daniel 10.

Something has happened that Daniel does not understand. We can relate to that. We don’t understand about 90 percent of what happens to us, either. Daniel is troubled. He sets out to get an answer. But three weeks of prayer and fasting produce no results.

What is he to conclude? If Daniel was like most people, he would be headed toward one of two conclusions: I’m blowing it or God is holding out on me.

And he would be dead wrong.

On the twenty-first day of the fast an angel shows up, out of breath and explains to Daniel that God had actually dispatched him in answer to Daniel’s prayers the very first day he prayed – three weeks ago. (There goes the whole unanswered prayer thesis, right out the window.) Three weeks ago? What is Daniel to do with that?

No, Daniel hasn’t blown it or was God holding out on him. Rather, the angel was locked in hand-to-hand combat with a mighty fallen angel, a demonic power of dreadful strength, who kept him from reaching Daniel for three weeks, and he finally had to get Michael (the great archangel, the captain of the Lord’s hosts) to help him break through enemy lines. Now I am here, in answer to your prayer. Sorry it’s taken so long…

There it is – Eternal Truth Number Two – this is a world at war.

We live in a far more dramatic, far more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia or Star Wars or The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings is that they are telling us something about our lives that we never, ever get on the evening news. Or from most pulpits. This is our most desperate hour.

Without this burning in our hearts, we lose the meaning of our days. It all withers down to fast food and bills and voicemail and who really cares anyway? Do you see what is happening? The essence of our faith has been stripped away. The very thing that was to give our lives meaning and protect us – this way of seeing – has been lost. Or stolen from us.

Notice that those who have tried to wake us up to this reality were usually killed for it – the prophets, Jesus, Stephen, Paul, most of the disciples, in fact. Has it ever ocurred to you that someone was trying to shut them up?

First, things are not what they seem. Second, this is a world at war.

Now for the most stunning news of all…

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p 29–32)

What do all the great stories and myths tell us? What do they have in common? What are they trying to get across?

Wherever they may come from, whatever their shape might be, they nearly always speak to us Three Eternal Truths.

These stories are trying to remind us that things are not what they seem. There is a whole lot more going on here than meets the eye. Much more.

After the tornado sets her down, Dorothy wakes and steps out of her old farmhouse to find herself in a strange new world, a land of Munchkins and fairies and wicked witches. The Land of Oz. How brilliant for the filmmakers to have waited for this moment to introduce color in the movie. Up till now the story has been told in black and white; when Dorothy steps out of the house, the screen explodes in color, and she whispers to her little friend, Toto . . . I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

Neo is awakened from the death-sleep of the Matrix to discover that the time is not 1999, but 2199, and the world the thought was real is actually a massive deception cast upon the human race to keep them prisoners.

Jacob falls into a dream under the desert stars and sees a ladder resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God… ascending and descending on it (Gen. 28:12). He wakes, more awake than he’s ever been in his life, thanks to the dream, and realizes for the first time hat there is more going on around him than he ever imagined. Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it (Gen 28:16).

And I was not aware of it. Isn’t this the very lesson of the Emmaus Road? You recall the story—two followers of Christ are headed out of town after the Crucifixion, as dejected as two people can be, with every reason in their minds to be so and more. Their hopes have been shattered. They staked it all on the Nazarene, and now he’s dead. As they slump back toward their homes, Jesus sort of sneaks up alongside, very much alive but incognito, and joins their conversation, feigning ignorance—and they not seeing it is him.

Why do you suppose God gave us this story?

Might it have been to remind us things are not what they seem? That our interpretation of events may be more than a little off? If we’ll start there, with a little humility, then we, too, might move on to have our eyes opened to the rest of the story in our lives. There is more going on here than we imagined.

We live in two worlds—or better, in one world with two parts, one part that we can see and one part that we cannot. We are urged, for our own welfare, to act as though the unseen world (the rest of reality) is, in fact, more weighty and more real and more dangerous than the part of reality we can see.

The lesson from the story of the Emmaus Road—the lesson the whole Bible is trying to get across—begins with this simple truth: There is more going on here than meets the eye. Far more.

That is Eternal Truth Number One.

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 26–27, 29)

For most of us rationalists, the word myth means not true. Isn’t that what you think when you hear someone say, “Oh, that’s just myth”? Meaning, that’s not factually true.

But myth is a story, like a parable, that speaks of Eternal Truths. I am not using myth in a technical way, referring to ancient Greek mythology. I am using it more broadly, more inclusively, to mean “a story that brings you a glimpse of the eternal” or “any story that awakens your heart to the deep truths of life.”

That is is the unifying quality of all mythic stories, whether they be Sisyphus or Sleeping Beauty or The Matrix.

Jesus tells a story about a sower who went out to sow some seed. The year is uncertain; so is the identity of the sower in question. He and his seed are metaphors for something far more significant that a farmer and a bag of corn. In this case, they are symbols for the Son of God and the eternal Word. The story is meant for all of us and so it transcends time and space and speaks for centuries.

Myths are like that. They are stories that remind us of the transcendent and the eternal.

Note the success of the Star Wars films or, more recently, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Millions of people have enjoyed them – and more than once. It isn’t because we think the stories are true in a factual sense. We don’t even stop to ask the question about their historical accuracy or their scientific possibility. Their appeal lies deeper, in the realm of the heart.

Years ago a mother wrote to C.S. Lewis regarding her son (age nine) and his love for The Chronicles of Narnia. The boy was feeling bad because he felt he loved Aslan (the lion hero of the story) more than Jesus. With grace and brilliance Lewis replied that he need not worry, “For the things he loves Aslan for doing and saying are simply the things that Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus; and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.”

Truth doesn’t need a verse attached to it to be true. All that you loved about Aslan is Jesus.

Kilby says, “Systemizing flattens but myth rounds out. Systemizing drains away color and life, but myth restores. Myth is necessary because of what man is… because man is fundamentally mythic. His real health depends upon his knowing and living his… mythic nature.”

Mythic stories help us to see clearly, which is to say, they help us see with the eyes of the heart. So cast a wide net, and draw in all those stories that have ever stirred your soul, quickened your spirit, brought you to tears or joy or heroic imagination.

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 24-26)

“A sower went out to sow some seed…”
“A man fell into the hands of robbers…”
“Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and looses one…”
“There were ten virgins with ten lamps…”

What’s up with all these stories?

Think about it. You are the Son of God. Your job is to communicate truth that will lead to the eternal rescue of lost humans. Would you do it like this?

A treasure hidden in a field? A lump of dough? Ten virgins and something about oil?

Why doesn’t he come right out and say it – and get to the point? Jesus is not entertaining children; he is speaking to adults about the deepest things in life. But he seems to be telling us some rather puzzling stories. Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, we think we are the enlightened ones. We are children of the internet and cell phones and The Weather Channel. We aren’t fooled by saying what is true and what is not. For certain thinigs… proposition is useful and helpful. Sacremento is the capital of California; water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit; you shoes are in the front room, under the sofa.

But proposition fails when it comes to the weightier things in life. The fact is that the Civil War was fought between the years 1861 and 1865. And while it is also a fact that hundreds of thousands of men died in that war, those facts hardly describe what happend at Bull Run or Antietam, at Cold Harbor or Gettysburg. You don’t even begin to grasp the reality of the Civil War until you hear the stories, see the pictures from the time, visit the battlefields, watch a film like Glory.

How much more so when it comes to the deep truths of the Christian faith. God loves you; you matter to him. That is a fact, stated as a proposition. I imagine most of you have heard it any number of times.

Why, then, aren’t we the happiest people on earth? It hasn’t reached our hearts. Facts stay lodged in the mind, for the most part. They don’t speak at the level we need to hear. Proposition speaks to the mind, but when you tell a story, you speak to the heart. We’ve been telling each other stories since the beginning of time. It is our way of communicating the timeless truths, passing them down.

And that’s why when Jesus comes to town, he speaks in a way that will get past all our intellectual defenses and disarm our hearts. He tells a certain kind of story. And the best stories of all, the ones that bring us Eternal Truths, they always take the form of parable, or sometimes we say, fairy tales. Better still to call them myths.

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 23-24 )

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Cor. 4:16-18

The first line grabs me by the throat. Therefore we do not lose heart. Somebody knows how not to lose heart? I’m all ears.

For we are losing heart. All of us. Daily. It is the single most unifying quality shared by the human race on the planet at this time. We are losing—or we have already lost—heart. That glorious, resilient image of God in us is fading, fading, fading away. And this man claims to know a way out.

So, how, Paul—how? How do we not lose heart?

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. 2 Cor. 4:18

What? I let out a sigh of disappointment. Now that’s helpful. “Look at what you cannot see.” That sounds like Eastern mysticism, that sort of wispy wisdom dripping in spirituality but completely inapplicable to our lives. Life is an illusion. Look at what you cannot see. What can this mean? Remembering that a little humility can take me a long way, I give it another go.

This wise old seer is saying that there is a way of looking at life, and that those who discover it are able to live from the heart no matter what. How do we do this? By seeing with the eyes of the heart. Later in life, writing from prison to some friends he was deeply concerned about, Paul said, I pray . . . that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened” Eph. 1:18.

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p. 21–23)

Before he promised us life, Jesus warned that a thief would try to steal, kill, and destroy it.

How come we don’t think that the thief then actually steals, kills, and destroys? You won’t understand your life, you won’t see clearly what has happened to you or how to live forward from here, unless you see it as battle.

A war against your heart.

And you are going to need your whole heart for what’s coming next. I don’t mean what’s coming next in the story I’m telling. I mean what’s coming next in the life you’re living. There are a few things I know, and one thing I do know is this: we don’t see thing as clearly as we ought to. As we need to.

We don’t understand what’s happing around us or to us or to those we love, and we are practically clueless when it comes to the weight of our own lives and the glory that’s being … held back.

We don’t see clearly because we don’t see with the eyes of our heart.

(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge p 18 )