In the Medieval World, people believed that physical objects could talk, come alive, or become portals that could take you to alternative worlds. The universe was thought to be enchanted like this. Many European fairytales in those centuries, and the ones after, proceed from these imaginations.
Think about the teapot or candlesticks in the French fairytale, Beauty and the Beast.
Or a more modern adaptation, consider the wardrobe in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Inside the wardrobe was a passage to the land of Narnia. Now, remember that CS Lewis’ day job, and actual expertise, was not Christian theology, but Medieval Literature.
And of course, the people of the middle ages were right.
I believe that physical objects can come alive and be a passageway, too.
Last week, my two-year-old daughter transitioned to a big girl bed. The switch flipped when she knew the crib wasn’t for her any longer.
As I disassembled this crib, I remembered how enchanted this baby bed was and is. How alive this object is in my heart and mind.
See, the majority of nights from almost 8 years (with a few interludes while we waited on the arrival of the next child), Mandy and I laid down one of our babies in this bed.
The bed itself is a physical object that is alive to me. It is like a sign that points me to the gracious keeping and sustaining grace of God. It reminds me of the promise that when my babies slept, that we could sleep because the Lord never sleeps. We asked the Lord for his faithful care every night. It takes me, in other words, to the world of God’s steadfast love, to a whole world of promises that the Lord always kept.
Not only is it a passage that transports me to the perfect care of a Father for my children. But it whisks me away into the living memories of all the ways that this same Father loved and grew me in his own way in these precious years, too.
This old crib is a sacred thing. Enchanted, even.