small smile

   I hang up the phone with a smile on my face.  It’s strange because I’ve just been talking with a woman in my church whose husband has just passed away.  He had suffered a severe stroke some weeks back, had fought hard, but had eventually succumbed to the damage.  I had been up to the hospital to see him.  He was in pain.  Nonresponsive.  In those moments there’s really only one thing you can do.  I lowered myself into the chair at his bedside and began to pray.  Perhaps, more often than not, that is the only thing we are really supposed to do after all.  Surrender the pain, the confusion, the anger: asking the Lord to “come and see” the sorrow, like Mary when she meets Jesus after Lazarus has died.  We find in Mary the invitation each of us has to ask Jesus into our sadness, our grief, our sorrow.  And he comes, himself weeping.  My Saviour isn’t afraid to cry.  We can enter into the grieving together.

   Death has a way of infiltrating our senses.  The colour of the wall looks muted.  Familiar sounds dull.  We find ourselves doing menial tasks without much thought—keeping busy, I suppose—or we’re crumpled, deflated, emptied of all that feels good and right.  I remember hearing the news that my Grandpa Cain had died.  I think it was the first day of school, 1999.  Dad told me.  I was standing in the kitchen by the dishwasher, myself suddenly awash with a strange mixture of relief and sadness: relieved that the pain and sickness were finally over; sad that it had ever happened at all.  Lord, come and see.

   So what caused the smile this morning?  It was the remembrance that beyond the death and pain, there is indeed a light that shines out the clearer.  A light that does not nullify or ignore the potency of such a sting, yet bathes us afresh in memory and witness anew.  The light is hope.  Hope that rushes to the tomb and finds only folded grave-clothes.  Hope that carries still the scars of sorrow, yet is healed and made whole.  Hope that calls friends to a shore-breakfast of the morning’s catch.  Hope not as abstract principle: Hope who is a Person.  That Person who is no longer dead, but living again.  The same Person who promises that same hope for us: that death be forever broken of its power, that life be restored and renewed again in the morning of New Creation.  This is the Hope of Resurrection—made real and alive in Christ himself.  And this is why I smile, for in that simple phone call—a small gesture, attempted by a pastor to bring comfort, to simply be and be still in the presence of those in mourning—I could hear Hope already awakened and alive in her heart.  And it was beginning even then to spill over and fill me with hope.  The pain isn't over, certainly.  But it is no longer all that is.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”  -  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Amen.  Come and see us, Lord Jesus, come and see.

finding quotes

I really like finding good quotes.  I think I started ‘collecting’ them, in a sense, while I was in college.  It was the first time in my life where I did a lot of nonfiction reading.  As a naturally fiction-loving reader, this was a bit of a stretch at first; after time, however, I’ve come to love some of my text books as much as my favourite stories.  They remind me of people who I learned with, or of ideas that I can remember wrestling with at a certain point in time.  Most of my favourite nonfiction authors are highly quotable: Eugene-Pete and N.T. Wright among them.

Quotes help to crystallize those moments: focussing our attention on some thought or attitude or comment that moved us or startled us or made us laugh out loud.  Good quotes.

I discovered while reading The Hobbit for my Mythgard class that the Tolkien quote at the top of my blog is actually something Thorin says near the end of the story.  "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world" (Tolkien, The Hobbit).  Since it’s been a while since I’ve actually gotten to the end of the Hobbit (I’ve restarted it twice, I think?  Since first reading it…) I had no idea this was Thorin’s line!  It actually sounded like something Tolkien would say in his day-to-day life (probably was!).

In parting, here’s another great Tolkien excerpt.  This one from The Lord of the Rings:

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Anyone with a favourite quote out there?  Let’s hear it!

On Hope

In the mounting climax of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins are caught in a physical and emotional maelstrom as they realize that their quest has been completed at the expense of their own lives. The reactions of our heroes provide a startling contrast. Frodo has resolved himself to death; he announces a final appreciation of Sam’s friendship and loyalty. Sam, however, feels only joy at witnessing Frodo’s restoration. He quickly asserts:

“Yes, I am with you, Master,’ said Sam, laying Frodo’s wounded hand gently to his breast. “And you’re with me. And the journey’s finished. But after coming all that way I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me, somehow, if you understand.”
“Maybe not Sam,” said Frodo; “but its like things are in the world. Hopes fail.” (Tolkien, Return, 231).

Yet Sam’s hope has not failed. Rolland Hein reminds readers that there is in Tolkien’s legendarium an “overarching Power whose purposes will not fail” (Hein, Mythmakers, 208). This transcendent guidance is especially noted in the early exposition of The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf assures Frodo that he is meant by this Higher Power to possess the Ring. Sam has seized some understanding of this truth and has taken it a step further than Frodo—he believes in a grand conclusion to his existence based on divine orchestration.

Sam portrays aspects of the Christian’s future hope in eventual glory. Paul reflects on a powerful eschatological assurance in his Epistle to the Romans. The Christian’s hope is on the bases of his or her justification by faith through the resurrection of Christ. Hope is the Christian’s anticipation of ultimate salvation; a state which will not be fully realized until the redemption of our bodies (Romans 5:2-5). Our hope of glory is rooted in the promise of our future resurrection and eternal life.

The context for this hope is found in the midst of suffering (Romans 8:18-39). Like Sam, we are to endure our present struggles. Paul is not suggesting an escapist’s ignorance of real life. Instead, we wrestle through life with a deep assurance that our stories will end with what we have been promised through Christ’s resurrection. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28; NASB).” Christians find this hope in the promise of the Gospel. It is rooted subjectively in the historical resurrection of Christ and objectively in the power of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life. Douglas J. Moo concludes that Paul sees hope as an essential element for what it means to be a Christian. We are believers who exist in the tension of the “already, but not yet” of our glorification. “We are a people who are always looking forward to what is yet to come.” (Moo, Romans, 139)

Paul’s instructions, like Sam’s honorable example, bring with their inspiration a piercing challenge: Do we endure hardships with joy, hoping in what we see not? With faith, we can pray for the day when we will still have hope in the midst of sorrows. Our eyes will stray, like Sam’s, to where the “sky far off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness and the ruin of the clouds.” (Tolkien, 232) In a way, we are better equipped than Sam to look through our present sufferings towards an ultimate closure to our life’s journey.

The Scarlet Monk