ATBOTNW Chapter 28: Little Daylight

[Written for the Wheatland Mission Youth Group Book Club]
So here I will begin to conclude our lengthy, scattered romp through At the Back of the North Wind. The final two readings (chapter 28, "Little Daylight," and chapter 36 through the end of the book) are maybe a bit easier to read than some of the earlier stuff, and are my favorite parts of the book (along with chapter 4, when Diamond first meets the street-sweeper). I will treat the story of Little Daylight in this post.

Little Daylight resembles Sleeping Beauty, especially as it begins with a group of fairies blessing a newborn princess. Of course there is an uninvited wicked witch who comes in with a curse for the child, a curse that is then lessened by two fairies that have been kept in hiding, suspecting the trick. I don't really want to get much more into it than that except to draw your attention to the seventh fairy's blessing, which follows the witch's second curse that Little Daylight, in addition to sleeping all day, also "wax and wane with the moon." At this point the hidden seventh fairy enters and concludes: "Until...a prince comes who shall kiss her without knowing it." The king asks her what she means by this and she simply replies, "Don't be afraid. The meaning will come with the thing itself."

So what does all this mean for us?

Well, I think this fairy tale is a really good insight to MacDonald's view of the problem of good and evil. In my interpretation, Little Daylight is you and me. The fairies are God. And the witch is the presence of evil in the world (if it helps, you can call this Satan). The point of the whole blessing/cursing ceremony at the beginning of the fairy tale is to show us that God really wants to give us good gifts (cf. Matt. 7:11; Luke 11:13), but that, somehow, for some reason, He can't actually prevent bad things from happening to us. (I know this idea goes against what we think of as an all-powerful God who can, theoretically, do anything He wants to, but that's another discussion for another time.) Now even though He can't prevent bad things from happening, He can eventually turn them into something good (this is, in a nutshell, what we mean when we speak of redemption).

Now here is the important part. I know I just got done saying that Little Daylight is you and me, but it turns out that we are also kind of the king. The seventh fairy (God) comes out of hiding and says something about a prince and a kiss that doesn't really make sense to anyone, but is apparently meant to limit the witch's curse (evil's power). Then the fearful king buts in and asks God (seventh fairy) to explain what He (she) means by this. And the king is told 1.) To not be afraid, 2.) That meaning is not as necessary as he thinks it is, and 3.) That what is predicted will come.

And it is this precise moment in the fairy tale that we find ourselves stuck in. You, me, and anyone who has ever lived in the world. We have been told (and hopefully experienced firsthand) that there is a God who loves us and blesses us. We are also aware that there are things that happen (to us, to our friends, to our family members, to complete strangers) which cannot be described as blessings. And, as Christians, we are vaguely aware of a promised end to all this evil, but we want to know what God means when he tells us that there will be a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Revelation 21).

And, just like the king, we are told to not be afraid. We are told that the thing that is predicted will come. And we are told that when it comes, we will understand.

This is, in a nutshell, what we mean when we speak of faith.