Some Thoughts on Dragons

Brooks Hanes (and his family) were a part of tc@hh (the church @ hickory hollow)... and when he posted this over the weekend, I asked his permission to re-post it on my blog.

Nowadays, dragons are fun, cuddly beasts. I suppose they have been made nice by our culture. I sense we may be wrong.

Back in the days of Middle Earth there was a different and more natural kind of dragon.

There is a scene in Tolkien’s The Hobbit where the nefarious Smaug is living on, dwelling in, and successfully guarding, what would seem the entire wealth of gold stolen from all of Middle Earth.

Then it hit me like a gold brick in the forehead: I realized dragons have no use for gold. There is nothing to gain from it, nothing to trade, no market of other dragons who can even redeem it for dragon coffee beans.

But there is one thing a dragon can get from it: the foulest and most entertaining pleasure of knowing no one else can have it.

In so many ways, in family, money, power, control, in events, even church, I see that indeed I am like this dragon. I want just so others cannot have.

Praise to God that He saves even the worst of dragons.

First, wow. "I want just so other cannot have." While I have personally managed to hide that sentiment from others, it still can chew away the superstructure of my walk with God... even if nobody else sees it.

Second, I was reminded of another dragon... in another fantasy world - Narnia. 

Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis)

And I found a wonderful meditation on that chapter from Voyage of the Dawn Treader - one of my favorite passages in the Chronicles - written by Jennifer Nyhart - The Undragoning of Eustace.

Picture is "Smaug's Treasure" by the Brothers Hildebrandt.