Her early memories of joy and love in the bosom of her father are very much like the joy and love Eve (and Adam) experienced in Eden, or our own early days of innocence in life. Then tragedy struck.
In Cindy’s case, the loss of her father left her to the not-so-tender mercies of her step-mother and -sisters, and living in the shadowy edges of the home they had stolen. From her. In our case, sin broke the fellowship with our Heavenly Father and left us trapped with our Snaky Deceiver in the burnt out cinders of our hopes and dreams, slaves in the ruins of our inherited home.
Her day to day life was filled with dreams and hopes for rescue, our desire (often sub-conscious) is to return to those days of innocence and joy in fellowship with our Heavenly Father, a quest that seems even more far-fetched and impossible than a scullery maid longing for a Prince to rescue her.
Suddenly, in the midst of the gloom and dark of her daily struggle, a ray of hope broke through, and someone she had never known gave her the opportunity to meet the Prince. In one of the few accurate uses of this phrase, she said, “I haven’t a thing to wear!” With a few waves of the wand, Cindy is cleaned and coiffed and covered - through no power of her own! Yes, just like her, all that we have in God’s eyes is “filthy rags”. We’d never be fit for His Presence...without His intervention!
Then, at the Ball, she not only meets the Prince, he chooses her for love!! That’s right, the very thing she’d been hoping for was coming true right before her eyes, so she did what so many in her place would - she ran away.
OK, you’re going to remind me about her deadline and everything turning back into pumpkins and mice yadda yadda. But in our story, when faced with the Promised Fulfillment, we often run and hide, either in shame or fear or astonishment, definitely knowing we’re not worthy of such Love.
So Love comes searching.
Do you think we would love the Cinderella story if there weren’t a “Happily Ever After”? The Gospel of Cinderella really is Our Gospel, because it has the only Happy Ending that matters.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:4-7
