Something’s wrong…
Topic: Faith
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
Many of you will recognize these as the immortal words of Snoopy, that aspiring novelist. Snoopy often sat on top of his dog house, hunched over his typewriter, trying to get the rest of his great novel to flow out of that opening sentence.
But what you may not know is that Snoopy actually borrowed those words from Edward George Bulwer–Lytton, a Victorian novelist who died in the 1800’s.
Bulwer–Lytton used those words to begin his novel, Paul Clifford. And every year, in July, the “Bulwer–Lytton Award” is given to the novel that is distinguished by having the absolutely WORST opening sentence of any novel published the previous year.
Now, I don’t know what Bulwer–Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford was all about, but we all know this much about it, don’t we? We know that in the first chapter something BAD is going to happen.
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
The reader is just waiting for the story to start off with some accident or crime that will become the problem that has to be resolved throughout the rest of the narrative.
In literature (and in movies) what’s happening in nature often reflects what’s happening at the center of the story.
There’s a reason why it’s “always winter and never Christmas” in Narnia at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. And there’s also a reason why that long winter starts rapidly thawing into a beautiful spring in the middle of that story. Aslan is on the move.
Or — if you’re more of a Tolkien person — compare the beauty of the Shire with the dark gloom of Mordor.
Beauty (or the lack of beauty) in the surrounding environment reflects what’s happening at the center of the story.
Well, the same is true in God’s story.