Update from Jillian!

At getAHEAD, we've been reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with the kids. Most of us have made it about to the third or fourth chapter, but we wanted the kids to have an idea of the entire story, so we had a movie day last week.

I grew up on The Chronicles of Narnia and have always loved those stories, but they've lost the ability to surprise me. Watching it with the kids last Wednesday, though, brought some of the wonder back.

I sat with two girls I've known all three summers I've been here. One had never seen it before. She kept looking at me with huge eyes full of wonder. At the beginning she was excited as she saw things we'd read about in class. As the story unfolded, she kept turning to me with questions or just with a look of amazement.

At the climax of the movie, where Aslan is killed in Edmund's place, she snuggled close to me and whispered, "He isn't really dead, is he?" But he was. And as she turned back to the screen, I could feel her sense of loss. I felt it myself. And then when he came back, she jumped a little from the excitement. "I thought he was dead!" I explained the resurrection and she made the connection. "This is like Jesus." We whispered about the cross, and how we, like Edmund, had to die. We talked about how Jesus died for us, how His power conquered even sin and death. And I think she really got it.

It was one of those times that makes the long hours of interning completely worth it. You never know if you will get to actually see a child's life transformed by her understanding of God, but we keep teaching and loving in the hope that it will happen. I haven't seen yet if her life is transformed because of the cross, but I have seen her get a little bit of a clearer understanding of it. And I pray that it will take effect in her life.

Please pray with us.