Invisible Lion

"Oh, Aslan," said she, "it was kind of you to come."

"I have been here all the time," said he, "but you have just made me visible."

"Aslan!" said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. "Don't make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!"

"It did," said Aslan. "Do you think I wouldn't obey my own rules?"

- from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

Lucy Pevensie had just done a very brave thing when this exchange occurred. To save the lives of her friends, she had braved the frightening upper floor of a house she had been told was haunted by a very dangerous magician (who was either alive, dead, awake, sleeping, upstairs, downstairs, or somewhere else... nobody was sure) in order to read from a specific book a magic spell which would turn invisible things visible again. She and her party, who were on a grand seafaring adventure, had been captured by some individuals who had read the reverse spell from the book and made themselves invisible. After a while they had become tired of the "invisible" gig and decided they actually did want to be visible, but they were too scared to go upstairs again because the magician had also become invisible when they read the invisibility spell. If Lucy wouldn't go upstairs, find the magic book, and read the spell, the invisible people (or whatever they were) had promised to cut the throats of Lucy and everyone with her.

Lucy went upstairs and eventually found the right spell, but when she read it, just as the invisibility spell had unintended consequences (turning the magician invisible), the visibility spell had the unintended consequence of turning anything visible that was invisible - and apparently Aslan had been hanging around those parts invisible when Lucy read the spell.

When I read this passage to my daughter a few nights ago, a few things jumped out at me. (SPOILER: in case you don't already know it because you've been hiding under a rock since 1950, Aslan is the character in the world of Narnia who is similar to Christ in our world.) The first thing is that Aslan tells Lucy that he "obeys his own rules." In the context of the story, he's saying that if there is a magic spell that is constructed based on principles that have been put into place in that world, he will not go against them. But in the context of the Christian faith of the author, the famed apologist C. S. Lewis, this idea is used to explain that evil exists in the world not because God is not powerful enough to eliminate it (He certainly is powerful enough), but because He has given mankind the option to follow or reject Him, and He will not forcefully take it back without giving mankind ample time to make our decision.

The other thing that jumped out at me was that Lucy, without knowing it, had in her hand the power to make Aslan visible to herself and to others. Think about that for a moment, knowing again that Aslan is a Christlike character. Is Lewis saying to us through story that each of us has the power to make Christ visible to others? I think that's exactly what he was saying. By simply following Christ, obeying His word to the best of our ability and relying on His grace both to help us when we are too weak to obey and to forgive us when we fail, we make Christ visible to others. Lucy was engaged in a completely selfless act when she made Aslan visible; she was scared to go upstairs, but she did it to save the lives of her friends. Although the book doesn't put it this way, if you had asked Lucy, doubtless she would have told you that she was only doing what Aslan would expect her to do. When we live our lives as we know Christ desires us to, when we begin to exhibit some of the characteristics of Jesus because we are letting Him live through us, we start to give people some idea of what Christ looks like. We make Him visible by being faithful representatives of Him on the earth.

Of course, when we make Jesus visible, we may not get to hug a lion afterward... but we may get something far better. Two words from the mouth of Jesus: "Well done."

Planet Narnia

Planet Narnia
By Michael Ward

When I read The Narnia Code a month or so ago, I found myself convinced but vaguely unsatisfied. I saw that Michael Ward had a good case on his hands, but it seemed somehow incomplete to me. But I had heard that his earlier book, Planet Narnia, was a "more scholarly" work that covered much of the same ground. That statement is correct... it is more "scholarly" and it does cover a lot of the same ground... but boy oh BOY is it more than just a wordier version of the same thing! Planet Narnia goes places that The Narnia Code wouldn't dream of going.

I covered the basics of Ward's planetary theory about the Chronicles in my review of The Narnia Code, so I won't go through all that again here. Much of the material is exactly the same between the two books; if you read both you will even recognize some of the sentences they have in common (I understand that NC is a revision of PN). But the two books approach the subject from different directions. NC treats the whole thing kind of like a mystery story; the first chapter is actually called "The Mystery," and Ward goes to great lengths making the point that people have wondered about a common theme in the Chronicles but have not been able to figure it out. PN gets right into the meat of the matter, not making a big deal out of the mystery but diving right into the scholarship of the matter. It's not necessarily a better or worse approach; I think the NC approach is probably more appealing to someone who does light reading for pleasure, since it has that air of a good mystery story about it, and the PN approach is going to be more engaging for someone who maybe has a more comprehensive knowledge of Lewis' body of work and who wants all the details.

And if you're looking for details, Planet Narnia certainly delivers! NC touches briefly on the planets in some of Lewis' other writings, but PN covers all of the connections, from Lewis' poem called "The Planets" to his non-fiction work The Discarded Image to his Space Trilogy and even to some more obscure (even unpublished) works. Ward even occasionally takes a look at works from other authors that Lewis was very likely to have been influenced by. The information is much deeper in PN; the chapters are much longer (I would estimate that it took me at least twice as long to read one of the PN chapters about one of the planets as it took me to read the corresponding chapter in NC, and in some cases maybe three times as long) and the vocabulary is more complex as well. Take this sentence from page 45 as an example: "This focus upon the aestival aspect of Jove's influence was derived, in part, from Lewis's observation of the development of the Criseyde story in post-Chaucerian English poetry." Sometimes I had to read a sentence twice or three times to get the point! If you absolutely don't like three-dollar words, you might stick with NC. You certainly won't breeze through PN; it will take you some work to get through it. But I found the effort rewarding; it was worth every "appurtenance" and "ichneutic" to get to the greater wealth of information in the more detailed book.

I've read an awful lot of C.S. Lewis' work. I've read some books about his writings, too, and I even have the book containing the unfinished story fragment called "The Dark Tower" and some other obscure stuff. I'm familiar enough with his corpus that reading this was like seeing for the first time a road through territory with which I was already basically familiar. If you're not as big a fan as I, you may not enjoy it so much. In fact, if you've read the Chronicles but haven't read the Space Trilogy (Out Of The Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) I would recommend taking in the Space Trilogy before tackling Planet Narnia; Ward talks quite a lot about the Space Trilogy in PN, seeing in it some of the seeds of the idea of writing a whole series with the planets as an underlying theme. Taking a look at The Discarded Image might be helpful too, but I would consider that less of a prerequisite than the Space Trilogy. Once you're familiar with the Chronicles and the Space Trilogy, though, if you're ready for a wild ride through the imagination of C.S. Lewis, dive right in! For true C.S. Lewis fans, this book is a real eye-opener and a lot of fun. Give it a look!

Web links:
My review of The Narnia Code, both the book at the DVD
PlanetNarnia.com - buy the book
NarniaCode.com - buy the book - buy the DVD
MichaelWard.net (the author)

The Narnia Code - Book & DVD

Narnia Code: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens
By Michael Ward

I know I'm in good company when I say that I've loved the Chronicles of Narnia ever since I was a little boy; I'm guessing that a majority of the people reading this probably have similar stories. I was a young teenager when I first discovered them, and I still have my original set of the seven books. I remember being so excited by what most people would consider a clear allegory of Christ's death and resurrection in the first book, and then puzzled when the rest of the books really contained very little that resembled any stories or characters from the Bible. But I loved the books anyway, and as I grew older I read more and more of C.S. Lewis' work... actually, I read everything I could get my hands on, from the Space Trilogy to his amazing works of apologetics to The Screwtape Letters and even a few things he wrote before becoming a Christian. In college I literally read everything by him that they had in the university library.

I've always been so impressed with how methodical and thorough of a thinker Lewis was. That's one reason the Chronicles seem to be a little bit of an anomaly; they seem to be related mostly by the geography of the world of Narnia and the person of Aslan Himself, and frankly, in a few of the books Aslan barely even appears. And then there are other odd things in the books... Father Christmas, for goodness sakes? What's with that? Why would they even know about Christmas in Narnia anyway? I think I basically just sort of wrote those things off, thinking that Lewis was writing the books to entertain children, or maybe just sort of to blow off steam, and that there was not too much rhyme or reason to the whole thing.

That is, I thought that way... until now.

Michael Ward's new book The Narnia Code presents a theory of what holds the books together which rocked my whole concept of the series, and which, to a fan of C.S. Lewis' entire body of work, has a ring of truth to it. When I started reading, you could have colored me intrigued; by the end, you can color me convinced.

Basically, Ward believes that Lewis, who was a professor of medieval literature, used the medieval concept of the universe as a framework for the series. Before Copernicus came along with a whole different idea of the way the universe was organized, it was believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and there were seven "planets" that circled around it in concentric orbits (the "planets" were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn... our understanding of the moon and sun as different from those other planets didn't appear until a bit later, and planets past Saturn were not discovered until the invention of the telescope). Each of the planets was associated with a mythological deity, and those gods was associated with certain things. Each book is based around the superstitious and mythological concepts surrounding one of these planets/gods. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is, for example, the "Jupiter" book, because Jupiter was considered the god of joviality (which explains why when joy begins to return to Narnia as winter breaks, the jolly Father Christmas appears), and Prince Caspian, which is all about war, is based on Mars, who was the god of war. The planets and books line up quite nicely; if you're interested in finding out more details, I'll refer you to the official Web sites at the bottom of this article, and to the book itself (click here to purchase it from ChristianBook.com).

The Michael Ward book itself was, if I understand it correctly, based on the BBC film of the same name (discussed below), and the BBC program was based on Ward's earlier book, Planet Narnia. I have not yet read Planet Narnia (I plan to take a look at it very soon), but my understanding is that it is a more scholarly book, while The Narnia Code is more targeted at the layman. The first few chapters lay out the way Ward came to make his discovery of the link between the books and medieval astronomy, and then it goes straight into explaining the thematic elements of each book, one at a time. I found the initial few chapters a little long for my taste; but once he finally got into the themes of the individual books, I was so hooked! In addition to being a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, I've long been a fan of ancient Greek/Roman mythology, and the connections seem obvious once they're pointed out. It made me want to go back and re-read the Chronicles themselves again, to sort of sniff out the links for myself. The book is an enjoyable read for any fan of the series; you'll want to read it a chapter at a time and digest the information before moving on to the next one.

(For the record, Ward makes it clear, as Lewis did, that the books are most definitely about Jesus Christ; Ward is not trying to say that Aslan is Zeus or anything like that. The idea is that Lewis used the planets and their mythological associations to create the atmosphere for his stories and to point up different aspects of Christ's character, not that Aslan represents a different pagan god in each book.)

The Narnia Code (DVD)

Shortly after I read the book, I was at the Christian bookstore near my house, and to my surprise, I spotted the DVD of the BBC program on the shelf! My understanding was that it would not be available until early 2011, but there it was! I snagged a copy and watched it with my family. Surprisingly enough, the DVD contains very little information about the whole "planets" idea; most of it is a biography of Lewis himself. The main program doesn't even give the whole list of "this book matches this planet" associations (although you can find that in the DVD bonus features). I was expecting more about the planets theory, but I found the biography of Lewis interesting and, in a few cases, it even presented information about Lewis that I had not heard before (and I've read quite a bit about Lewis over the years). I enjoyed the DVD just as much as I enjoyed the book, although in a different way; the two complement each other nicely.

If you love the Chronicles of Narnia books, you will at least find The Narnia Code interesting. You may agree with Ward, as I do, or you may think he's a crackpot trying to make a buck off Lewis' legacy, and you may even find the idea that Lewis drew part of his inspiration from stories of pagan gods and goddesses vaguely offensive. But the theory is compelling and the evidence is extensive, and as a Narnia fan, you owe it to yourself to look into these books. It will change the way you see the series forever.

I was provided with a review copy of the book version by Tyndale House Publishers. I purchased the BBC DVD on my own. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.

Web links:
My review of Planet Narnia
NarniaCode.com - buy the book - buy the DVD
PlanetNarnia.com - buy the book
MichaelWard.net (the author)

Caspian

This weekend my wife and son and I, along with another couple, went to see the new Narnia movie Prince Caspian. I have been a fan of the seven books ever since I was a child, and I was blown away by the first movie. Realistically, I was a little nervous about the movie, not because I didn't think it would be well-made and be a terrific story, but because the analogies to the Bible are not as... well, they're not as nursery-school as in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. This story requires some more mature thought to understand how it applies to Christian life. You have to be very intuitive... maybe the level of, I don't know, the average first grader... to see the Christian life in the story. Call me a cynic, but I was afraid the American Christian subculture, the ones that made the first movie such a success, weren't going to get it! Maybe I was wrong; apparently the movie topped the box office in its first weekend out, beating out even Iron Man, which seems to be the movie to talk about this summer. We'll see next weekend if that was because people liked the first movie so much, or because they liked this one.

Last week I read this completely missing-the-point review of the movie from the San Francisco Chronicle. It calls the movie "one of this year's biggest disappointments" which "lacks magic" and which has "no epic scale and no spirit worth talking about." A good bit of the review is about subjective things, such as character development and pacing, which are hard to argue with, not because I agree with them but because they are opinion. But the thing that I find the most... flabbergasting? Annoying? Frustrating? Is this: "The Christian allegory, unmistakable in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' is nowhere to be found in 'Prince Caspian.' Not even its former outlines are apparent. Alas, Lewis without Christianity just isn't Lewis." The fact that (at Lewis' own admission) Lewis never intended any of the Narnia books, even Lion, to be an "allegory" at all is apparently not something the author understands.

Yes, Aslan represents Jesus Christ. He dies and rises again. But listen closely: the Pevensie children are not the apostles Peter and John and Andrew and whoever. Edmund is not Judas Iscariot. The story is not The Gospel According to Clive Staples. The story is what it is. It is a story about what might happen if God created a world and populated it with talking animals, and that world needed saving. The messiah of Narnia is a talking animal, because it is a world of talking animals. One of the friends we went to the movie with told me that he was having trouble figuring out who represents what Bible character in Caspian... maybe that's because he misunderstood Lion as well.

So keeping in mind that Lewis had no intention of rewriting the Bible when he wrote his Narnia books, let's think about the Bible itself for a second. Let's think about Noah and the ark. Let's think about Esther and Jonah and David & Goliath and Job. Are those stories about Jesus and His death and resurrection? No, they are not, although it could be (and has been) argued that you can find things in those stories that point that direction. Aslan can't very well die and resurrect in every installment of Narnia, can he? If he represents Jesus Christ, that would actually be quite blasphemous (Jesus died once and for all, not multiple times: Romans 6:9-10). Prince Caspian tells more of the history of Narnia. Aslan is present in the story, but not quite in the way he was in Lion (although if you remember, he didn't exactly turn up in the first ten minutes of that movie, either!)

Prince Caspian is, in some ways, a more down-to-earth representation of the Christian life than Lion. The Pevensie children are faced with a challenge, and they rise to the occasion. This is real life, although most of us don't live our real life shoulder to shoulder with minotaurs and centaurs. Egos get in the way of making wise plans, as when Peter presents the foolhardy plan of attacking Miraz's castle and will not listen to Caspian's objections, which are based on first-hand knowledge: "You called us," Peter arrogantly says, shutting up the only person with real understanding of the strategy they needed to follow. Caspian then lets his own personal issues undermine the plan, which might have worked anyway if executed as intended. I keep remembering a scene afterward, when Peter, brooding over his defeat and the loss of life caused largely by the personal failures of his own leadership, is sitting staring at a huge mural of the not-yet-present Aslan. It reminds me of times in my life when things didn't work out for me, and I sat wondering when God was going to help out.

There are smaller lessons for smaller people, too. I had a discussion with my eight-year-old about a scene where the entire army of Narnia's enemy is about to cross a bridge, and little Lucy appears on the other side, apparently all alone. Lucy smiles at the army of her enemies, and pulls out her tiny dagger. The reason Lucy can smile is that she knows that although we (and Miraz's army) can't initially see him, Aslan is right behind her. Echoes of David and Goliath, for sure. in the end, Lucy does not have to use her dagger... Aslan wins the battle then and there.

In one earlier scene, Lucy wakes up to the sound of a lion's roars. She gets up without waking the others, wandering off into the woods alone, and finds Aslan waiting for her. My little boy asked me, isn't that bad to go into the woods by herself like that? It gave me the chance to explain that yes, it is dangerous for a child to go off by him or herself, but Lucy had heard the voice of Aslan. When we truly hear the voice of God giving us instructions, sometimes there may be risk involved, but if it is the voice of God, our safety is guaranteed. (As it turns out, Lucy was dreaming... when she wakes up for real, she wisely wakes Susan before going anywhere, which is also a good thing for a child to see and understand.)

Peter and Caspian aren't the only ones whose personal failures cause problems... in the course of the story Aslan appears to Lucy several times, but although she joyfully tells the others about seeing him, she does not actually follow him, as she knows he intends for her to. When she finally finds him, she asks him if she could have averted some of the bloodshed if she had followed him as she knew she should. Aslan tells her that the could-have-beens are not what matters. What a lesson to each of us! We fail God on a daily basis, but we can't erase those failures and correct them... time continues moving in a forward direction, and we have to continually take the situation as it now is and seek God's plan B, C, D, or Z, until we stop messing up and get it right.

Surprisingly, the character who does not fail in his duties in this movie is the much-maligned Edmund, who made such a mess of things in the first story. In a scenario created for the movie which is not in the book, Edmund actually rescues Caspian and Peter from making the colossal error of reawakening the White Witch (the situation is alluded to in the book as a possibility, but in the movie version it almost happens). Again, it shows how sometimes the wrong choice seems so right, and it takes the help of a friend to (in this case literally) shatter the illusion that wrong is right.

In the end, Peter goes through a grueling one-on-one battle with the evil usurper-to-the-throne Miraz, finally beating him but refusing to execute him (the agreed-upon outcome of the to-the-death battle) humbly deferring to Caspian (the true rightful king of Narnia) that honor. Caspian takes the killing sword but refuses to execute Miraz, who is then killed by one of his own men with a Narnian arrow in order to make the battle continue (the one-on-one battle was supposed to determine the winner of the war without extending the fighting). Caspian is the true rightful king of Narnia; it is his throne to begin with. Then his side beats Miraz in a fair fight, earning back the throne again, but still they face a horrible bloody battle. This is when Aslan steps in and crushes the army that has come against his people.

Why doesn't Aslan come on the scene earlier? Lucy asks him that same question. "Nothing happens the same way twice," Aslan tells her (a bit ironically, Aslan says this same line twice in the movie!) This is the primary thing people need to keep in mind when watching this move. It is NOT The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The Lion and the Witch do both appear, of course, but the wardrobe, such an important part of the first story, does not (the children get into Narnia this time through a train station and out through a tree root... seriously!) This is a different story. The stakes are different; the characters are different (the Narnians from the first movie died hundreds of years ago); the way it works out is different. What is not different is that the believers in Aslan face opposition, a crisis, just as believers in Jesus do; the Narnians must fight their enemy, just as believers in Jesus do; the Narnians make mistakes, and sometimes they have grave consequences and casualties, just as Christians do in real life; and at the right time, just when everything is hopeless and the Narnians have come to the end of their rope, Aslan comes in and wins the battle. This is the character of the God of the Bible. This is life as we experience it. God does not expect us to sit around and do nothing when evil strikes, but when the battle becomes too much for us, He brings salvation.

Prince Caspian is every bit as much of a Christianity-based movie as The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Hopefully, Christians will take the time to think about it and understand the more complex issues in the story. If they are lost in this movie, they will be even more lost in later installments; it only gets more involved (and thus, more meaningful) from here on out.

White Stag

I was just listening to the Roar of Love album from 2nd Chapter of Acts. The album is based on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and the last song, "White Stag," is about the hunt for the stag at the end of the book. Interesting how the children, now grown into adults, begin to see landmarks of their previous journey (the lamppost is the main example) but have forgotten what the landmarks are. They follow the signs anyway, and they wind up children in "our" world again. Since the white stag is clearly a symbol for Aslan/Christ (or maybe for the Holy Spirit, since Aslan generally appears in the books as a lion?), the picture that presented itself to me was this: when we grow "old" and have lost sense of the true landmarks of our spiritual journey, sometimes God will lead us into a place where we can become children again.

Food for thought.

Heroes of Narnia and Real Life

It was one of those great stories that you can't put down at night
The hero knew what he had to do and he wasn't afraid to fight
The villain goes to jail while the hero goes free
I wish it were that simple for me

And the reason that she loved him
Was the reason I loved him too
And he never wondered what was right or wrong
He just knew, he just knew

Shadow and shade mix together at dawn
But by the time you catch them simplicity's gone
So we sort through the pieces, my friends and I
Searching through the darkness to find the breaks in the sky

And the reason that she loved him
Was the reason I loved him too
And he never wondered what was right or wrong
He just knew, he just knew

And we wonder yes, we wonder
How do you make sense of this
When the hero kills the maiden
With his kiss, with his kiss


It was one of those great stories that you can't put down at night
The hero knew what he had to do and he wasn't afraid to fight
The villain goes to jail while the hero goes free
I wish it were that simple for me
It were that simple for me

David Crosby - "Hero" - from his CD Thousand Roads


I realize David Crosby has had a long struggle with his substance addictions and that is partly what this song is about, but it rings true for all of us. In fact, when I hear this song it always reminds me of the stories we read about Jesus in the Word (although Jesus had no specific "she," we do know that he had female followers that were very devoted to Him and His ministry). Fact is, none of us, Christians or not, always do the right thing, and life is very rarely "simple." And often we do injure those we love unintentionally ("...the hero kills the lady with his kiss...") The song reminds me that a good story presents us with an ideal to strive for - but I'd say the best story, the ideal put forth in this song, is the story of Jesus.

But that doesn't mean that stories about less-perfect heroes can't have a grand impact on us. Today I was looking at some photos of the characters from the upcoming The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe film, and particularly the pictures of Peter and Edmund struck me as capturing their characters from the books admirably. For any who do not know, the story is about four children, two boys and two girls, who travel through a magic door into a fairly-tale land where they defeat a witch, who has enslaved the land in winter, with the help of a Christlike lion named Aslan. The children learn that they are to be kings and queens of Narnia from then on. The picture of the oldest child, Peter, shows him in the midst of battle... he looks like he doesn't really know quite what he is doing, but he is battling with all of his might. The picture of Edmund, his younger brother and the third-oldest sibling, shows him slinking around a little, looking like he thinks he's not worth much and he's out to prove it (and his misbehavior in the story is one of the primary plot points). They strike me as perfect representations of real brothers... an older brother who isn't any less clueless than the younger, but who is doing his best, and the younger brother who thinks he can never measure up to the (impossible) image of the older brother that he has constructed in his mind.

Neither of them thinks they can do what they have been called on to do... but both are princes in the land of Aslan. It's one of those great stories, that's for sure... one that echoes the lives of people in general, children specifically, and Christians more metaphorically. I hope one day someone can tell my story... not that it's a remarkable one, but maybe it will interest somebody... and they will tell of my flaws, but in the end I will, with Christ's help, fulfill my calling and provide an example that can encourage that person to follow after Jesus.

Narnia Sountrack deserves a reshuffle

For months I eagerly awaited the Spetember 27 release date of the Christian "Inspired By" CD related to the upcoming movie version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. When it came out I loved a couple of the songs, but something just didn't quite do it for me... until I reordered the playlist in my MP3 player software! Some of the songs just belong together, or in different spots. For example:

- Track 3, "Open Up Your Eyes", and Track 9, "Turkish Delight", both relate to Edmund's seduction by the White Witch, using a candy called turkish delight which she had enchanted to entice him to do whatever she wanted him to do. Since those events occur early in the story, they make better sense if they are together, and near the beginning of the playlist.

- Track 2, "Remembering You" (the Steven Curtis Chapman track you might have heard on your local CCM station in the past few days) makes a LOT better sense at the END of the disc, where you are remembering what has happened, rather than at the beginning.

- What's up with that worthless track by Delirious? ? I mean, I actually like Delirious? quite a bit, but chanting "We're getting stronger every day..." over and over doesn't have too much of a connection with the story, does not qualify (to my thinking) as worship music (which is supposed to be Delirious?'s trademark), and just plain doesn't make too much sense.

Here's my ordering of the songs (deleting the unfortunate Delirious? track entirely):

1. Waiting For The World To Fall (Jars of Clay)
2. New World (TobyMac)
3. Turkish Delight (David Crowder Band)
4. Open Up Your Eyes (Jeremy Camp)
5. I Will Believe (Nochole Nordeman)
6. Hero (Bethany Dillon)
7. Lion (Rebecca St. James)
8. More Than It Seems (Kutless)
9. You're The One (Chris Tomlin)
10. Remembering You (Steven Curtis Chapman)

When I listened to them in that order, it was like the whole thing opened up to me and became a much more enjoyable experience. It's like someone gathered a near-perfect batch of songs, then someone who had no idea what was going on rearranged them in the wrong order.

I need to burn myself a CD with the songs that way...