Finding God in the Hobbit

by Jim Ware Narrated by Simon Vance

Overview

Thousands have been captivated by the spiritual themes that underlie Tolkien's imaginative fiction. In Finding God in The Hobbit, Jim Ware indulges readers with an exploration of the spiritual significance of J. R. R. Tolkien's famous children's classic. As they are acquainted with Tolkien's message of transcendent truth, readers will see how God is mysteriously at work even in everyday moments. A reflection summarizes each chapter's main insight.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171728199
Publisher:	EChristian, Inc.
Publication date:	08/15/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

FINDING GOD IN THE HOBBIT

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By JIM WARE

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Jim Ware
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1-4143-0596-6

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Chapter One

Bilbo went to sleep with [the dwarves' song] in his ears, and it gave him very uncomfortable dreams. -THE HOBBIT, CHAPTER 1, "AN UNEXPECTED PARTY"

A DREAM COME TRUE?

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Snuggled down beneath the bedclothes, staring sleepless into the darkness, Bilbo put forth one last effort to make sense of the absurd events of the past six hours.

"Dwarves!" he fumed. "Dwarvish racket! Dwarvish talk of journeys and dragons and treasures and burglaries! Dwarves on the doorstep and dwarves in the parlor! Dwarves demanding seed-cakes and raspberry tarts with their tea-not to mention my best ale!" He snorted in disgust. What would his father, the respectable Bungo Baggins, have said? "It's a wonder the pantry wasn't left completely bare!"

"Ah! But then you've been known to hobnob with dwarves before this," cautioned a voice from theother side of his brain-a voice suspiciously reminiscent of his grandfather, the scandalous Old Took. "In fact, you've acquired something of a reputation for associating with outlandish folk of all sorts. It's rumored you've even been seen with elves."

"That's beside the point," protested the practical Baggins part of him. "It was thoughtless of Gandalf. Not that I want to appear inhospitable. But an uninvited crowd at tea-time is quite enough to push any hobbit beyond his limits!"

"Limits?" The Took side of him laughed softly. "What do you know of limits? How will you ever know if you don't step outside the door and leave your pantry behind?"

A breath of wind caught the curtains. Outside the crickets had raised a chorus in the hedge. Was it really a hint of elvish music that Bilbo heard wafting on the breeze? A scent of spring and wakening earth and approaching summer stirred a nameless longing deep within him; and the Took side, seeing its chance, stung him with an unforgiving pang of wanderlust. Bilbo sighed and turned his face to the wall.

"You're right, of course," he muttered miserably. "It's what I've always wanted! But in middle age a hobbit realizes that some dreams just have to remain private."

"Private or not," the Took side said, "I have a feeling that your dream is about to come true." A Dream Come True?

Out in the parlor the dwarves had taken up their song again:

Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold.

Bilbo moaned and drew the covers up over his head.

* * *

To sleep! Perchance to dream ...

Ay, there's the rub indeed. For dreams can shatter restful, comfortable slumber. And the ramifications of a dream come true aren't always what you had expected. Hopes and longings nurtured in the secret darkness have a way of taking on a very different shape in the daylight of reality.

Once there was a man who had a dream. For thirty-eight years he lay stretched on a miserable mat beside a miraculous pool, lame, unable to rise, waiting for an angel to stir the water, cherishing a vision of himself leaping and skipping like a boy. It was a vision that seemed unlikely to be realized. But it kept him alive, and he clung to it as a child clings to an empty bottle or a scrap of an old blanket.

Then one day it happened. The dream emerged from the shadows and greeted him with a thumping, hearty "Hello!" It took him by the hand and searched his face with dark, piercing eyes. Then it said, "Do you want to be made well?" And, strange as it seems, he found that he could not respond with a simple yes (see John 5:1-8).

This is one of the great paradoxes of the human condition: the debilitating fear that so often raises its head when the thing you've always wanted is suddenly presented to you on a silver platter. When a prospective employer calls back to say, "You're hired," or the girl of your dreams accepts your proposal. Even the boldest among us knows what it is like to shrink before the incarnation of our own most deeply held desires. It's an odd but extremely common experience.

Bilbo Baggins, the furry-footed, middle-aged, comfortably situated hero of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic tale The Hobbit, ran up against this paradox when his dream came knocking at the door one afternoon in late April. Bilbo, it seems, was not like other hobbits. Most of them were content to stay at home in front of the fire with a foaming pint or a cup of tea. He, on the other hand, was subject to chronic fits of restlessness and discontent. Not that he was unappreciative of his creature comforts-he was, after all, the son of a Baggins. Still, there was something in his makeup, something rooted in the unpredictable eccentricities of his maternal kin, the Tooks, that inclined him to pine for journeys and adventures and woodland trysts with elves.

How odd, then, that on this night of nights he should find himself lying in his bed, trembling at the sound of his dream coming true on the other side of the wall. His unexpected visitors, the dwarves, were singing again. It was the same alluring, spellbinding song that had stirred him so profoundly earlier in the evening: the one about enchanted gold and caverns old and the dangers of the long and winding road. This was just the sort of thing he'd been waiting for all his life. Why, then, this fluttering and churning in his stomach? this feeling that he wanted them all to go away and leave him alone?

Gandalf knew exactly what the hobbit was feeling-and why:

Bilbo had changed, of course. At least, he was getting rather greedy and fat, and his old desires had dwindled down to a sort of private dream. Nothing could have been more dismaying than to find it actually in danger of coming true!

A private dream is a sweet and succulent thing. It's like an obscure hobby or an old romantic movie or a book in a cozy corner on a rainy afternoon. It's a source of solace in the midst of life's disappointments; a place of retreat far from the madding crowd, where the world becomes whatever one wants it to be. But a dream come true is another matter altogether. For in the final analysis, a dream come true is nothing but a call to commitment and action.

I understand what Bilbo was up against. I experienced it myself when I got my first chance to write a book for publication-something I'd been wanting to do since childhood. Somehow the unforeseen opportunity set off alarm bells inside my head. Instantly all the dreadful implications of actual authorship stood ranged before me like a troop of treasure-hunting dwarves: the hard work, the battle with discouragement, the potential for criticism, the possibility of failure. I was seized with an irrational desire to scream, "You don't understand-I was only kidding!" Like Bilbo, I wished that it would all go away and leave me alone.

Similarly, while our personal dreams are as individual as our fingerprints, each of us was created with a longing, a dream if you will, for fellowship with our Maker. While the "Baggins" in us may be satisfied to putter along without the challenge of His mystery, power, and love, the "Took" knows very well that it was created for bigger things. And so in private moments and secret places, like Nicodemus, the clandestine disciple who sought Christ only under cover of darkness (John 3:2), we grope after Him with unutterable groanings and inconsolable longings. Like the psalmist we cry, "My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God" (Psalm 84:2). Then, when He shows up on the doormat and says, "Come out into the light and follow Me!" we retreat to a back bedroom, hoping He'll leave if we pretend nobody's at home. Like Moses we whine, "O Lord, you've got the wrong person! Please send somebody else!" (See Exodus 4:13.)

Jesus Christ is our dream come true. He is the Desire of All Nations-and the Desire of All Nations has come. The problem is that we find the tonic of the adventure He offers too bracing for our tame sensibilities and tastes. He is not the kind of Savior we were expecting. He shatters our repose with shocking statements about dividing swords, the joys of suffering, and the rejection of the Son of Man. He frightens us with bizarre and uncompromising demands. Leave home and family. Sell what you have and give to the poor. Allow yourself to be hated and persecuted for My sake. Take up your cross and follow Me.

What does it all mean? If this is what the journey holds for those who answer the Master's call, who can expect to be saved?

Like Bilbo, we will never know until we throw off the covers, jump out of bed, and somehow find the courage to step up on the road.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from FINDING GOD IN THE HOBBIT by JIM WARE Copyright © 2006 by Jim Ware. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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