Once Upon A Time

Ever since I can remember, I've loved fairy tales. Last year when the ABC show, Once Upon A Time, premiered, I was hooked. I loved the interplay between Storybrook and fairytale land. I loved the premise that the characters didn't know who they were and that it took the sacrificed daughter to break the curse.

Of course it makes me think about the parallels to my faith. I'm sure the creators of the show didn't think, "How could we take the idea of fairy tales and share the gospel through it?" But if you sift the episodes, it's revealed. In the beginning, the Evil Queen uses her magic to place a curse over the inhabitants of Once Upon A Time and transports them to Maine to live in Storybrook, a modern day town. The curse prevents the inhabitants from knowing who they really are. Before the curse took hold, Snow White and Prince Charming had a child, the savior who could break the curse and restore the knowledge of their true identities. The entire first season is this child, now an adult, living life in Storybrook, understanding its residents and working to figure out the truth. Eventually, all is revealed. Once the curse is broken, the residents remember who they are, but are still stuck in the place that is not their true home.

It's not a perfect story of redemption, but I'm sure you see the similarities. When sin entered the world, the human race was cursed. Our intimate relationship with God was severed, and thus began the battle for our identity. Sin causes us to believe the lies of Satan. He tells us that we are the sin that ensnares us. If our sin is sex, then we identify ourselves as a player, a hook-up, etc. If our sin is anger, we shrug it off and say it's just my personality. If our sin is bitterness, we demand our right to be right, to hang onto the hurt, and claim victimhood. If our sin is food, we identify ourselves as husky, pleasantly plump, or super skinny knowing that we are abusing our bodies one way or another. Maybe our sin is money. We identify ourselves as thrifty, never giving to those in need. Or maybe our identity is defined by how much we give to others, but behind closed doors, are over our head in debt. All of us, again, all of us, have been cursed. We struggle with the curse in different ways, just as Snow White and Prince Charming did in Storybrook.

When Jesus died on the cross to break the curse of sin and to restore our relationship with God again, he gave us the opportunity to regain our true identity. As in Storybrook, just because the residents now had their eyes opened to the curse, they didn't immediately begin to behave as their true selves.  We also may understand that we no longer have to live in bondage to the curse, but because it was a part of our lives for so long, we often revert to cursed behavior.   The wonderful thing about Jesus is that we now have him to free us from that curse. If we revert to old behavior, we can receive forgiveness. If we allow God to work through us, he will also change the old identity into our true one. Some people are freed immediately from old bondage, while for others he works out the old identity in ways that may not seem quick enough. The key is that we must cooperate with him. Do we honestly want to be free? Or are we so tied to our cursed identity that we are afraid to trust that we can truly become a new person?

Snow and Charming still lived in the cursed land after the first season. We also still lived in a cursed land. We still struggle with the behavior of others, situations that result from nothing we did, the economy of our community, etc. The Storybook residents knew there was another place that was their true home.Someday, we have the hope of living in a new land, a place that is prepared in ways that we can only imagine. If the beauty of this earth is only a glimpse of what is to come, I can't wait to get there.