Some 30-plus years ago, I preached a sermon on Colossians 1:13-14: “He [the Father] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
In thinking about what it meant to be rescued and transferred from one Kingdom into another, I decided to use as an illustration my favorite fairy tale, “The 12 Dancing Princesses.” This is not the most well-known of fairy tales. It has never been made into a Disney movie. But it has been written and re-written and updated in many ways. The story is that there was once a King who had twelve daughters of whom he was very protective. Every night he would lock them into the long bedroom in which they all slept; every morning he would come and release them. But what he did not know was that every night another door would open in the floor of the princesses’ bedroom revealing a stairway to a magic kingdom where they would dance all night.