Last night, Morgan and I started watching the first season of the television show “Once Upon a Time.” The basic premise is that a black curse was cast upon all the inhabitants off a fairytale land wherein lived all the characters about which we grew up reading: Cinderella, Rumplestiltskin, Gepetto. Jiminy Cricket, etc. The main characters are Snow White and Prince Charming, who were the impetus for the curse from the evil queen in the first place. This curse threw everyone into this alternate, horrible world (ours), into a little town in Maine, where no one knows who they really are or remembers their past. If you ask them, it’s all kind of a blur.
There is one boy there, Henry, who knows that there is a curse, and he’s figured out who most everyone is. He was adopted as a newborn by the mayor of “Storybrooke,” who is actually the Evil Queen. It seems as though she knows who she is, but not entirely. In the fairytale world, Henry is the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming, because their daughter–Henry’s birth mother, Emma–was saved from the curse by being hidden in an enchanted tree. But I don’t think his adoptive mother knows that. It was foretold by the evil Rumplestiltskin that Emma would be the only one to break the curse. She would, on her 28th birthday, come back and save them.
Which is what is happening in the series.
What struck me about this show is the spiritual parallels it draws. Whether these are intentional by the creators and writers of the show, I don’t know; but they are obvious to me.
We live in a world under a curse
We have no hope here; our only hope lies in the place we were meant to be
The evil one is constantly trying to thwart our efforts to break his stronghold
We don’t really know who we are until we find our identity in Christ
As followers of Jesus, our job is to help people discover their true identities–children of the King
Figuring out what is true and what is not can be difficult sometimes
We can change the world and lift the curse
Good always wins
We haven’t yet learned why the Evil Queen (Regina, in the town of Storybrooke) hated Snow White so much. She said she took something from her that was very important, but they haven’t yet–as of episode 5 of the first season–revealed what that something is. Unless I missed it, which is entirely possible.
Hope is very important. Henry, when asked by his psychologist (the Jiminy Cricket character, whom he sees because Regina wants this whole “town under a curse and she’s the evil queen” thing to be counseled out of his brain) why it’s so important that his theory about the curse is true, said “because this can’t be all there is.”
You’re right, Henry: This isn’t all there is.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going” (John 14:1-3, New International Version.)
Thankful today for:
624. a retreat for the men in my household
625. girl time
626. just the outer bands of a hurricane affecting us
627. sleeping in
628. a day with no agenda
629. pumpkin puree
Compelled 