Encounters with God - by Elizabeth Reynolds

I love the story from the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis - The Voyage of the Dawntreader. It is filled with so many little moments of encounters with God and things He wants to teach us.
There is a thoroughly unpleasant character who is introduced in this story called Eustace Scrubb. He complains and winges, and winges and complains and is just plain awful to everyone along the way. If you don't wish the plot to be ruined for you (for those who haven't read it) you can stop reading this if you want to...
There is a time during the story where Eustace, through his greed and a particular curse on a shiny, gold, awfully tempting (for him) bracelet, is turned into a dragon.
He doesn't want to be a dragon of course and (even despite the ability to fly and breathe fire) he becomes very sad, frustrated and sorry-for-himself, and just wants to be a boy again. Meanwhile, he is experiencing a tremendous amount of pain because of this tiny bracelet that is now stuck on one of his much thicker dragon-legs. Well... Eustace was about to be changed forever in a way he didn't expect...
After a while, Eustace meets the Lion. Aslan. And Aslan leads him to a well - "a lot bigger than most wells..." (Eustace himself telling the story) "...like a very big round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe, it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first...
I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh of course, thought I, that's what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully... In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe...
But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that's alright, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
Then the lion said... "You will have to let me undress you."
I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off...
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was, lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me... and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again."
I won't say too much more than that because this devotion is far too long now, what with quoting a whole chunk of text. I think I'll just leave you with those words (The parts in bold are points of great meaning that I have pulled out specifically for your pondering heart).
I just find this parallel so powerful, especially when the lion says,
"You will have to let me undress you."