We live in a fairytale.

You might not realize this as you struggle to pay your bills or sit in a traffic jam on your way to work. You might miss the magic as you surf the web or rub your aching temples. You might think that this world is mundane, filled with dreary drudgery. But that does not make it any less true.

What fairytale is this, you wonder? It’s a story about a precious prince or princess who has become lost in a distant land, unable to find home again. It is a story about hope and the forces of darkness, and how all the Powers of Hell are bent upon the purpose of crushing the spirit of our main character.

It is a story about the Prince of all Princes, who left His throne to come slog through the mud and hang on a cross to open the door that will let our prince or princess pass over His threshold and find the way home again.

That fairytale. You know the one—the one where you are the hero.

If you read it in a storybook from start to finish, you would gasp with awe at the bravery of our little protagonist and cheer at the triumphs. If you could see it with all the traps and terrors—the demons that tempt, the imps that irritate, the willow women who weave deceptions over the eyes of the men, until they believe that black is white, up is down, and boys are girls—you would cry out in fear at the hurdles our heroes and heroines must cross, and you would weep with joy when they, struggling through the webs and fog, refuse to leave the path.

What path, you ask? The straight and narrow one that leads to the pearly gates and the glories of eternal life.

But how, in this age of willow women weavings and demon deceptions can anyone possibly find that path?

Even now, there are still waymarkers, hints that tell us the way to go.

But the enemy knows about those waymarkers, too, and they are doing their best to wipe them out before we can find them—to remove the hints that help us tell the straight and narrow path from the primrose one—the wide, smooth, and easy way that leads to the pits of fire.

One of those waymarkers that the powers of darkness have bent their wills against is fairytales.

Part Two: Descent into Darkness