On Hobbits and History

Like many of us back in 2001, I watched Peter Jackson's epic portrayal of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece, "The Lord of the Rings".  I was amazed by the cinematography and captivated by the ultimate battle between good and evil.  It was spectacular. Until the end.  Unlike many of you, I had no idea this epic drama was a trilogy.  Yes, I am that stupid. 

So there I am, my emotions have reached a climax; I’ve laughed, cried and even screamed a couple times.  I’ve invested three hours of my life and I want a proper ending.  But I don’t get one.  The movie ends in a whimper with Frodo and Sam floating off across a large lake into God knows where.  After all this, the ring, the sword fights, those scary dudes on horses and this is how the whole bloody thing ends.  Are you serious?  I stood up in the middle of the theatre and yelled, 'what?  This is stupid, what a dumb ending!!!  At that moment, the guy sitting next to me simply turned his head and said, "it's a trilogy you idiot".....Oh.

Because I failed to understand the bigger picture, I couldn’t make sense of the portion that I had seen.  There was no point to it.  It was entertaining, but I was left wanting.  Life on planet earth is eerily similar.  If we struggle to believe there is a larger story going on around us, we find it difficult to see the point of our own smaller story.  Lesslie Newbigin writes:

"if there is no point in the story as a whole, there is no point in my own action.  If the story is meaningless, any action of mine is meaningless.”

The beautiful fact of seeing history from a Christian perspective is that there is a point to the story.  And that point is that God Himself began the story, has acted in the story in the form of his son Jesus and will one day bring the story to its final conclusion. Because we know the entirety of the story, and not simply a portion of it, each one of us finds our own significance, meaning and purpose within the greater narrative that currently and forever invites us into playing a part in the larger story.