Floating Free

In his novel Perelandra, C.S. Lewis reimagines Adam and Eve’s temptation playing out on an alien world. It is a world in which the first man and woman live on floating islands that drift, uncontrolled, in a planet-wide sea. Instead of a tree from which they must not eat, God has forbidden them to sleep for the night on the few pieces of fixed, terrestrial land.

They lead an idyllic existence, going where the waves and ocean currents take the beautiful and bountiful islands on which they live. The islands are a paradise, but their uncontrollable and transitory nature makes it impossible for their inhabitants to grow their own food or build permanent structures. The man and the woman lead a blissful existence, but one entirely dependent on God. The fixed land offers the temptation of a future that can be known and planned for but in a barren place full of hardship and death.

In Perelandra, what has been forbidden is to take one’s fate into one’s own hands. To live on the fixed land is to control one’s destiny, but it will be a small and bleak one, cut off from the rich and blessed life God intended. Peaceful abundance is traded for control.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher repeatedly makes the point that while we believe that we are in charge of our own lives, we are sadly mistaken. We struggle for scraps when we are meant to be fed by the hand of God. We trust our own wisdom and strength to keep us, rather than the God who made us and for whom our keeping is delight. We were not meant to carve our own meagre living out of this world but to be led by our creator into the ever-increasing wonders of the life he made us for.

Respond in Prayer

Dear God, Speak to us your true word in a world that says that we must pay any cost to survive. Teach us to trust in you for our keeping and our calling. Help us to give up our lives to you, and in turn, receive our true lives that are only found in you.

Michael Bonikowsky