O Key of David

Recently I was reading the Marcia Williams Dickens book to my Petely. (If you need a last-minute gift for a child, we are all Marcia Williams fans here.) Dickens, of course, knew his prisons. This time through the cartoon version of A Tale of Two Cities I was struck by its sketch of the Bastille. I could imagine the gloom, the stench, the hopelessness -- a place so wretched that Dr. Manette could not seem to believe he was no longer its prisoner.

I was 16 when I first tasted Christian freedom, sweet and heady. I was a senior in high school and I was miserable: striving desperately to be valedictorian, locked in a struggle with my parents over where I would go the next year. I went on a retreat where I met Christ as a Person for the first time. On Sunday morning after that Saturday night encounter, I sat down in the quiet and read the letter to the Galatians.

The fifth chapter took my breath away. Jesus was saying to me, "Jamie, you don't have to live this way, trapped in perfectionism and fear. Wouldn't you rather be free?" And I said, as I have tried to say every day since then, "Oh, yes. Yes, thank you."

The Key of David does not merely open the door and let the prisoners discover, if they can, that their jailer has been deposed. I am thinking about the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan and his army turn out the Witch's dungeons. "Leave no corner unsearched!" said Aslan. Our liberator seeks us out and leads us forth, blinking, into the sunlight. Lead me.

O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel,
you who open and no one closes,
who close and no one opens,
come, and lead forth from prison the conquered,
idling in darkness and the shadow of death.

Comments

[Erin]

Beautiful. I've been enjoying your thoughts through this Advent season.

[Amy F]

I thought we were the only ones crazy enough to read those books to our 5 year old! My dad got them in England when Peter was 2 months old and we've finally started looking at them. We have the Dickens one and The Odyssey/The Iliad and I think one with a bunch of Greek myths. I feel a little silly writing on Peter's kindy reading sheet that we read "A Tale of Two Cities" in one night. Peter really enjoys them -- I'm not sure how much he gets, but since he's reading these days, I figure that if I read the main words, he can follow along with the thought bubbles.

I'm still shocked anyone else owns them -- I've never seen them in the States.

I've been enjoying your O antiphon posts, too :)

[Jamie]

Our kids all enjoy them. It's not like we have to say, "Now we're going to sit down and read the Iliad" -- they ask to hear the stories. She does a great job respecting the integrity of the stories while also making them kid-appropriate. We also found them in the UK first, but have purchased others since we came back to the US.