Ryan's Ramblings

(An excerpt from my book, Be Ready.)

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

— Ezekiel 36:26, NIV

There’s a scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Edmund slips quietly into the courtyard of the White Witch and catches sight of a lion—massive, crouched, as if ready to spring. Moonlight falls across it, and for a moment, his heart nearly stops. He freezes in the shadows, unsure what to do.

But the lion never moves.

Slowly, curiosity overtakes fear. Edmund inches forward until he sees what he missed at first. The lion is covered in snow. It isn’t alive. It’s stone.

And with that realization, something shifts inside him. Edmund does what we often do when fear fades but the heart isn’t right. He postures. He pulls out a pencil, draws a mustache on the lion, and mocks what once made him tremble.

And yet Lewis lets us see beneath it. Even as Edmund jeers, the face of the lion remains—terrible, sad, and noble. And he doesn’t really get any joy out of it. Because somewhere deep down, he knows. That lion was never meant to be stone.

And maybe that’s what unsettles us most. Not just that Edmund is pretending—but that the lion is frozen. Strong, majestic, made for life, and yet cold, still, and unmoving.

Edmund, the lion—and you and me—were created with strength, with purpose, with the capacity to love, to lead, to walk with God. And yet something has hardened. Because of sin, we are not what we could be.

Sin rarely announces itself loudly. More often, it works quietly. It stiffens what should be soft. It numbs what should be alive. It turns a heart, slowly, to stone. And instead of dealing with it, we learn to live around it.

We deflect. We joke. We stay busy. We draw our little mustaches and call it nothing. But there’s no real joy there. Because beneath it all, something in us remembers: this is not what I was made for.

And into that condition, God speaks: “I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Not polish it. Not manage it. Remove it.

Jesus doesn’t come to manage your hard heart. He makes it new. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV).

Later in the story, Aslan—the true Lion King—comes, not with noise, but with breath. He moves through the courtyard, breathing life where there had only been cold stillness. What is brittle becomes soft. Warmth returns. Joy follows. Even the great lion—once frozen—comes alive again, as it was always meant to be.

That’s the work of holiness.

You don’t have to keep living in a hardened place. Christ is still breathing on people. And when He does, hearts of stone don’t get managed—they get replaced.

Let Him make you new.