Following the Thread

In George MacDonald's 1872 fantasy The Princess and the Goblin, young Princess Irene receives an extraordinary gift from her mysterious great-great-grandmother: a thin, silken thread attached to a ring on her finger. The grandmother gives her one instruction — follow the thread wherever it leads, no matter what.

One night, the thread begins to pull through the darkness. Irene follows it without knowing where it goes. It draws her down into narrow, twisting passages deep underground — goblin country. Everything inside her urges her to turn back. The destination makes no sense. The path feels dangerous.

But she keeps following.

The thread leads her to Curdie, a young miner boy trapped in the goblin tunnels. Her blind obedience becomes his rescue.

Obedience so often looks like Irene in the dark — following a thread we didn't choose, toward a destination we can't see, through passages that feel all wrong. We want to understand before we take the next step. We want the full map before we move.

But God rarely hands us maps. He hands us threads.

Abraham followed a thread toward a land he'd never seen. Moses followed a thread into a confrontation he dreaded. Mary followed a thread toward a story she could never fully explain.

The invitation of faith is not see, then go — it is go, then see. Take hold of the thread. Trust the One who laid it. Walk into the dark, and discover what was waiting to be rescued on the other side.