Because we tend to be forgetful <3
As it has been a full week for us, and much has happened in the world and our country yet again, I am careful with words.
Reading Proverbs 14 this week has reminded me over and over of the value of this trait.
So I have prayed what to share in this post and I keep returning to something someone else wrote a long time ago.
I read The Hobbit a while back and thoroughly enjoyed it. I do not read much fiction, but this was so good and didn’t overtake my mind. I marvel at the skill of Tolkien in describing landscapes and events of his imaginings in such effective ways.
After I finished, our Sarah loaned me the three books for The Lord of the Rings and I have had them tucked under the coffee table thinking I would read this winter and now winter has passed so I dusted them off and assigned them to my summer reading.
I loved watching the movies with her back in the day and always saw such connections to spiritual truths. I am not saying Tolkien wrote these books to teach theology, but his faith was important to him and thus it comes through in his words and thoughts.
A perfect example jumped off of page 6 and, please forgive me Sarah and all who do not do this, I dog-eared the page and have gone back to read several times. I even made Russ listen to it as we drove the other day. Twice.
I want to share it with you, but am editing out parts because not everyone is into the documentation of a fantasy world as I am…yes, I go back to the maps at the front to make sure I understand where he is locating people and events…sigh…such a nerd.
So here is part paraphrase and part quote of the passage as he describes the setting of the Shire in which the Hobbits lived.
{After a description of the area}…”The Hobbits named it the Shire…and a district of well-ordered business; and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to that peace and plenty were the rule of Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they ever knew of the Guardians (those who had protected Middle earth from evil), and of the labors of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it.”
The Lord of the Rings; J.R.R. Tolkien, Ballantine Books, 1954, page 6
These words struck me as one who grew up in a “well-ordered” world, in a pleasant corner…thinking that anyone who just did the right thing and followed the rules and worked hard could and would enjoy the same well-ordered living I experienced. Oh, I was warned frequently of the “dark things” out there and so was encouraged to stay away from them and to be honest, living like that is just as Tolkien has described.
We heed less and less the world outside and we forget that we are sheltered.
The rapid fire events of the past decade are a sharp reminder to us that we live in a fallen world. The luxuries and privileges we have enjoyed lulled us into a place of forgetting the darkness that earth is subjected to and it is a call to those who follow Christ to wake up and be proactive in remembering that it was He who has protected us. I believe as we, the Church, more and more forget this, He is more and more pulling back His hand.
As we have ignored Him, and I speak to the Church, not to the world; He is not going to force Himself upon us. As we have perhaps felt justified in the peaceful and well-ordered life we were blessed with, have we closed our eyes to the suffering and oppression on the other side of town or the other side of the world?
These situations of chaos and upheaval we see daily in the news are a call for us who declare we are His followers, to remember and to recount the things He has done. To remember Christ and how He set the example for us of laying down His life, forgiving those who persecuted Him and how He made our peace with God for us.
We must not forget or ignore those who have gone before us in the faith and who waged the good fight to bring His Kingdom of repentance, healing, restoration, forgiveness, mercy and grace to this earth.
We must remember that we have been “sheltered” and perhaps the doors of the shelter have blown open by HIs breath.
Blessings friends as you remember what Christ has done for us.
For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16