At the end of CS Lewis’ Prince Caspian, the Telmarines who had ruled over Narnia have been defeated by Aslan. Those that survive are offered a choice, to stay in Narnia with Caspian as king at peace with the talking beasts or to return home to the Island they came from. Some choose the latter. Aslan creates an entrance for them, a doorway back to their world and a doorway through which the children will return to London too. In the film, this is vivdly portrayed as Aslan splits a tree into an archway.
The idea of the way home being through something wooden is a common theme in the Narnia stories. The way into Narnia for Lucy at the beginning is through a wardrobe and into a wood. That is the way the four children will return home of course. Meanwhile, right at the end of “The Last Battle”, a stable becomes the doorway through which the Narnians and their human friends leave behind the dying “shadowlands” to go further up and further in to Aslan’s country. This of course prompted one of Lewis’s most famous quotes
“In our world too, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world,””
Yes, I realise, as I’ve pointed out here on these pages before that it likely wasn’t a stable but rather the part of the house where the animals tended to be housed at night, mixed in with the humans that provided a first home for the baby Jesus. However, I’m sure you’ll forgive Lewis that given the main point he is making.
If not a wooden structure for his birth, whether stable or the traditional image of a manger, it is via a tree, a wooden cross that Jesus will make his journey home. Further, it is through that cross of wood that we too find our way to the home he has promised to prepare for us. As the carol, “Born in the Night, Mary’s child puts it:
Truth of our life, Mary’s Child, you tell us God is good; prove it is true, Mary’s Child, go to your cross of wood.
Faithroots 