Life and the Hobbit-esque Slog

“Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning!”

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)

An absolutely beautiful wallpaper based on the original Hobbit cover art by RossSchmidt on DeviantArt: http://rossschmidt.deviantart.com/art/The-Hobbit-wallpaper-404247712

This evening, a housemate and I have plans to sprawl on the sofa in front of the second half of the extended edition of The Two Towers, while working our way through the second half of a packet of chilli Doritos. An excellent plan for anyone’s evening, I think, but especially for the said housemate and myself, because neither of us had watched the whole of the Lord of the Rings trilogy before embarking on our current run-through of it together.

You may indeed gasp in horror at this statement, O Appalled Reader; that would be the response I would expect based on experience, followed by something along the lines of, ‘How have you not seen it?’ or, ‘You have to see it!’ It always feels slightly as if my status as not having seen these films casts aspersions on my very membership of civilised human society; wounded, I tend to lamely attempt to make some level of amends by countering that I really like The Hobbit.

And I do really like The Hobbit. (We read it in our English lessons during the summer term of Year 7; in fact, sessions with that particular teacher consisted entirely of reading The Hobbit, writing our own adventure stories, and, in one memorable instance right at the end of term, eating ice cream, and I tend to feel that English lessons rarely get better than that.) Among the many highlights of the novel are included the trolls’ argument over how best to cook Bilbo and his dwarven companions; the escape from the Elvenking’s halls in floating barrels; and, of course, the famous riddle competition between Bilbo and Gollum. Why on Earth this last scene was abridged in the film version, when so much else that wasn’t even mentioned in passing in the (actually rather short) book was shoved in to eke out the plotline enough to charge viewers for three cinema tickets, is entirely beyond me.¹ In fact, as a result of all this cutting out scenes that were in the book in order to make space for elaborate subplots that weren’t, the Hobbit film trilogy ended up, in my opinion, being an altogether rather different animal to the book. The films seem to have been designed to be grand and epic and impressive;² that is not at all what the book is like. The book is full of people squabbling over niceties and making daft decisions and trudging along exhaustedly and wishing there was more to eat. For the high fantasy story it is, it is stunningly, in that sense, realistic.³

And that’s actually one of the reasons it’s such a favourite of mine. All this adventuring is all very well, but it’s pretty well guaranteed that if one were to give in to the Tookish side of oneself and set off on an adventure with a bunch of dwarves one barely knew, one would find oneself squabbling over niceties and making daft decisions and trudging along exhaustedly and wishing there was more to eat on not infrequent occasions. And yes, adventures include intense battles and daring escapes and the occasional encounter with a dragon, but they also include, necessarily, a whole lot of walking about in between them. In the following passage from Chapter 8, ‘Flies and Spiders’, the party are working their way through the gloomy forest of Mirkwood, and Bombur has just woken up from an enchanted sleep on account of which the others had been forced to carry him for some time:

[Bombur] woke up suddenly and sat up scratching his head. He could not make out where he was at all, nor why he felt so hungry; for he had forgotten everything that had happened since they started their journey that May morning long ago. The last thing that he remembered was the party at the hobbit’s house, and they had great difficulty in making him believe their tale of all the many adventures they had had since.

When he heard that there was nothing to eat, he sat down and wept, for he felt very weak and wobbly in the legs. “Why ever did I wake up!” he cried. “I was having such beautiful dreams. I dreamed I was walking in a forest rather like this one, only lit with torches on the trees and lamps swinging from the branches and fires burning on the ground; and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves, and there was a merry singing, and I could not count or describe the things there were to eat and drink.”

“You need not try,” said Thorin. “In fact if you can’t talk about something else, you had better be silent. We are quite annoyed enough with you as it is. If you hadn’t waked up, we should have left you to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of short commons.”

There was nothing now to be done but to tighten the belts round their empty stomachs, and hoist their empty sacks and packs, and trudge along the track without any great hope of ever getting to the end before they lay down and died of starvation. This they did all that day, going very slowly and wearily, while Bombur kept on wailing that his legs would not carry him and that he wanted to lie down and sleep.

Sleeping is, of course, excellent, but a forest floor is not exactly the best place to do it. (Especially if that forest is Mirkwood.)

And sometimes life is like that. And my point is not really that life is hard, although certainly it can be. My point is that life is often dull and plodding and disappointing and irritating, and the issue is not so much that dreadful hardship is fortuitously thrust upon us, as that we find ourselves midway through fulfilling commitments that demand of us effort they barely seem worth. And, when it comes to following Jesus in the midst of that wearying slog, I can often be like Bombur in my despair at the discrepancy between where I currently am and where I wish I was. Spiritually healthy as it is to long for that real and promised never-ending feast under the greatest King of all,⁴ such longing can all too easily end up robbing me of the motivation to actually do anything where I am. My depressingly lengthy to-do list seems to have nothing to do with the glory of the coming age, and I am painfully aware that I am capable of no deed, word, or thought that adequately reflects that glory.⁵ My legs will not carry me; I want to lie down and sleep.

Happily, it was never my legs that were carrying me in the first place.

Not that I have already obtained [the resurrection from the dead] or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained…

…our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

That’s from the third chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. (I’ve quoted from the New American Standard translation rather than my usual anglicised English Standard Version, because I think it expresses the idea more faithfully.)⁶ Note how Paul’s logic sits in exact contradiction to that I outlined in the previous paragraph. According to him, we press on in our inevitable imperfection not in spite of the knowledge that we are awaiting the return of our Saviour to perfect us, but because of it. Longing for perfection should not make me want, like Bombur, to stop putting one foot in front of the other and retreat into dreams; it should renew my commitment to keep plodding onwards, to press harder, to live by that same standard to which I have attained. Why? Because that’s what Jesus took hold of me for. The discrepancy between where I am now and where I wish I was should prompt me to reach more determinedly across the gap, even though I know I’ll never actually cross it in this lifetime, because that very reaching is a key component of what God intends for me, as much as my being ultimately brought into full perfection is.

Which all sounds very nice, of course. It’s a lot harder to actually apply it during the Hobbit-esque slog, when tasks are tiring and people are irritating and the necessary obligation in front of me seems very far removed from the metaphorical Lonely Mountain and Arkenstone and end-goal of the quest. But then, if it weren’t hard, there’d be no need for pressing on; I’d meander a couple of steps and already be there.

So what does this pressing on actually look like, in the translating of prose and writing of essays, the doing of laundry and food shopping, the following of the same dull route up to campus? Well, that would take another post to explore, for one thing, and for another, I’m still very much in the process of figuring it out. But striving to figure out how to actively follow Jesus in the everyday slog is surely a part of striving to actively follow him, and I’m learning. Thankfulness is one good thing to work on. Not grumbling is another. Taking pains to show respect and concern for others is too – am I being kind to my housemates and lecturers and the lady at the checkout and the incredibly slow walkers taking up the whole pavement in front of me?⁷

Following Jesus is an adventure, and as such, there tends to be a lot of walking in between the ostentatiously exciting bits – but when we consider that the very act of pressing on is part of God’s glorious plan for us, even the depressingly lengthy to-do list in front of us surely becomes at least a little bit exciting.

Footnotes

¹ For some purchasable-on-a-T-shirt hilarity on the subject of three films having been squeezed out of The Hobbit, reparrish on Redbubble is most excellent: http://www.redbubble.com/people/reparrish/works/13058873-writer-fights-tolkien-vs-lewis.

² Mind you, a Tobscus Literal Trailer is surely capable of de-epicising anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86bznYoj9e0.

³ If you would like to assess the correctness of this statement by reading or re-reading the novel for yourself, you are fortunate in that copyright expiry laws mean the whole thing is available free online – here, for instance: http://www.goodreads.com/reader/27325-the-hobbit?percent=24.028013.

⁴ Indeed, Romans 8 speaks of all creation, along with us, groaning as in childbirth until it should be liberated from decay and brought into glory: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+8&version=ESVUK.

⁵ The end of Romans 7 is useful on this: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%207&version=ESVUK. “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”  

⁶ Do have a peruse of the whole chapter. It’s such a good one, and Bible Gateway will gladly provide it for you in whichever version you like: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil+3&version=NASB.

⁷ It seems to me that people often quote Colossians 3:17 on the subject of living for Jesus in the everyday: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” But when you get some context on that, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=col+3&version=ESVUK, it comes at the end of a whole list of characteristics to be displaying. We are not simply told to do everything in Jesus’ name; we are also told what sort of thing that is going to consist of.

Twelve Underappreciated Biblical Women

Mulan:            No one will listen to me.

Mushu:           Huh? I’m sorry, did you say something?

Mulan:            Mushu!

Mushu:           Hey, you’re a girl again. Remember?

Mulan (1998)

I assume the one in the middle is supposed to be Mary, whom I won’t be mentioning in this post, chiefly because she cannot really be plausibly described as ‘underappreciated’. Not sure who the other two are, but presumably Biblical women of some description.

A title like the one above may seem somewhat incongruous after what I said last week about not elevating Biblical women at the cost of diminishing God – the supreme elevation of whom is the most admirable characteristic displayed by Biblical women, or indeed anyone else, anyway.¹ On the contrary, however, since one of the things that’s so brilliant about God is the way he uses fragile, wrongdoing-riddled human beings like us to achieve his purposes, examining the stories of Biblical women is an entirely worthwhile way of discovering more about him. I hope to provide some idea of how such a methodology might work through the following examples, arbitrarily arranged in chronological order.

1)     Leah

Perhaps a surprise to kick off with – surely Leah’s story is a fairly well-known one? Jacob rocks up at his Uncle Laban’s house and offers to work for him for seven years in exchange for his daughter Rachel in marriage. Laban then tricks him into marrying his other daughter, Leah, instead,² and charges him another seven years’ work for Rachel. The only information we really get about Leah up to that point is that she had ‘weak eyes’, which is an idiom for general unattractiveness rather than myopia or anything like that.

But take a look at the end of the chapter:

When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.” She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.³ 

Leah was desperate for her husband to love her and he just didn’t; he was, rather, devoted to his other wife, her own younger sister. It must have been absolutely miserable for her. Still, I think it would be wrong to take that first sentence of the section I quoted above to mean that Leah’s fertility was somehow divine compensation for that misery. Rather, I would see it as God’s way of working things out for his glory in that particular situation.

Leah’s reaction to the birth of each of her first three sons was a hope that now at last Jacob might feel favourable towards her – but it’s apparent enough that nothing changed. Still, somehow, through all that, Leah learned something: her husband’s good opinion of her was not the most important thing she could pursue, nor the way in which she was defined. Her relationship with God was independent of her marital relationship; God loved her regardless of whether she had weak eyes or was spurned by her husband, and was likewise to be praised regardless. And so when her fourth child was born, she simply praised.

Praise God that he cares for people whom other people reject and teaches them the truth of his glory.

2)     Shiphrah and Puah

Welcome to Call the Midwife BC. The people of Israel are being ruthlessly enslaved in Egypt and Pharoah has just told Israelite midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill all the baby boys they help bring into the world. This guy is a brutal dictator and the highest authority in the country; disobeying him would surely amount to suicide. Yet Shiphrah and Puah serve a greater authority: “The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.”

Somehow Pharoah buys their lame excuse about Hebrew women being rather more robust than Egyptian ones and finishing giving birth before the midwives arrive (probably, I playfully suggest, because he’s squeamish about asking for further details) and the midwives get away with it. It’s a decision God firmly blesses: “So God dealt well with the midwives … and because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.”⁴ More than that, however, this act of civil disobedience, by women simply doing their everyday jobs in a determinedly God-honouring way, preserves the life of one particular infant through whom God’s going to do a few noteworthy things later on; anyone heard of a guy called Moses?

Uh-huh. That guy. Here represented as awfully shiny, so we must be in Exodus 34 with this being the second set of stone tablets.

Praise God that he blesses right choices made out of fear for him, and that he orchestrates his grand plans not without, but rather through, concern for individual lives.

3)     Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah

Before you ask, no, not Noah as in ‘’s Ark’, who was most certainly a man, and whose name is spelt differently in the Hebrew anyway (Noach rather than No’āh as we have here). These were the five daughters of a chap named Zelophehad, one of the generation of Israelites who died during the forty years of wandering in the desert after the escape from Egypt. Since he had no son, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah found themselves about to be excluded from any share of his inheritance – about which, understandably, they were pretty miffed. So, faced with this injustice, they took their case to the top: “They stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest and before the chiefs and all the congregation … Moses brought their case before the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘The daughters of Zelophehad are right. You shall give them possession of an inheritance among their father’s brothers and transfer the inheritance of their father to them. And you shall speak to the people of Israel, saying, “If a man dies and has no son, then you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter.”’”⁵ 

Praise God that he is just and vindicates those who stand up for justice.

4)     Jael

You may recall that I mentioned Deborah among the classic examples of ‘strong’ Biblical women I offered in last week’s post. Jael shows up in the same chapters, although she probably doesn’t get as much attention in the Sunday-school version of things, since her actions aren’t exactly U-rated.

The story goes thus: enemy army commander Sisera has been defeated in battle by an Israelite called Barak and is on the run. He heads for Jael’s place, since her husband is a friend of his; she comes to meet him, and provides him with a drink of milk and a place to sleep. Then, while he’s sleeping, she grabs a tent peg and a mallet, and goes and hammers the peg straight through the side of his head. When Barak shows up in pursuit of Sisera, presumably ready for some single-combat heroics, Jael points him to the bloke he’s looking for, already dead in her tent, with a peg in his brain.

As a result of Israel’s victory that day, they were able to press hard against their Canaanite enemies and ultimately defeat them, resulting in forty years of peace. Jael gets a great little encomium in Deborah and Barak’s celebratory song:

Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk;
she brought him curds in a noble’s bowl.
She sent her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sisera;
she crushed his head;
she shattered and pierced his temple.
Between her feet
he sank, he fell, he lay still;
between her feet
he sank, he fell;
where he sank,
there he fell – dead.⁶ 

It’s one of those bits of the Old Testament at which I have a tendency to squirm awkwardly, because the whole smashing-tent-pegs-through-people’s-skulls thing doesn’t sit particularly comfortably with my nice, fluffy, cuddly view of God.⁷ Moral dubiousness is, to be fair, generally rife in the book of Judges. Still, especially worth noting here, I think, is the downright unexpectedness of the outcome: the enemy commander was not killed in the field of battle by a man with a sword, but in bed by a woman with a tent peg.

Yeuch. What a way to go. (The tomato being, of course, loosely symbolic.) Thanks to Boaz Yiftach at freedigitalphotos.net.

Praise God that he confounds our expectations.

5)     Abigail

Here’s another woman stuck in an unfortunate marriage. Her husband Nabal (it literally means ‘fool’) decided to be impolite and ungenerous to a bunch of guys who came to him from David (this was some time before he was anointed as king) even though Nabal was a rich man and some of his workers had been well treated by David in the past. David was seriously irked by this slight and, having told his men to arm themselves, went after Nabal. Fortunately, one of Nabal’s workers let Abigail know what was going on; she promptly got a whole load of food together and headed off to intercept David. The speech she made to him perhaps comes across as somewhat over-flattering, but the point is sound: don’t bother with killing Nabal, because it’s not your job to take vengeance for yourself; God will deal with your enemies according to his promises.

David was accordingly placated: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from avenging myself with my own hand! For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.”⁸ Abigail’s God-given quick thinking, humility, and eloquence saved a whole lot of lives, and reminded David of some important truths.

Praise God that he places people around us to remind us of what it means and looks like to live for him.

6)     Huldah

Here’s a question: as a king of Judah having just rediscovered the book of the Law and been exceedingly convicted by what it says, whom should one consult for advice on the matter?

Gold star for whoever suggested a prophet.⁹ That’s the situation King Josiah found himself in after his high priest Hilkiah found the book of the Law in God’s Temple, which was in the process of being restored. So he sent a bunch of guys to the prophetess Huldah, who offered a prophecy accordingly.¹⁰ 

What I really want to draw attention to here is that this all happened during the active ministry of such big-name prophets as Jeremiah and Zephaniah,¹¹ and yet Huldah was the first-choice option for Josiah’s subordinates. Just because someone doesn’t have a book of the Bible named after her or him, it doesn’t mean God wasn’t working through that person. I’d consider it a certainty that there were countless individuals through whom God worked during the periods covered by Biblical history who don’t get so much as a passing mention in a genealogy. Huldah evidently wasn’t called to write a portion of scripture; that didn’t make her any less of a prophet.

Praise God that he bypasses the flawed categories of success that the world teaches us, and works through all sorts of people in all sorts of ways.

7)     Martha

This may, once again, be a surprise inclusion in the list, since Martha is a pretty well-known character. However, the context in which she is usually referenced is that story in Luke’s gospel where she’s rushing round like a headless chicken trying to get a load of chores done, while her sister Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him. “Martha, Martha,” Jesus says to her, “you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”¹² 

And so we shake our heads at Martha’s worldliness – which is a surprisingly easy thing to do with a whacking great log in your eye¹³ – and move on. But take a look at what’s recorded about her in John’s gospel, when Jesus comes to see her following the death of her brother Lazarus: 

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”¹⁴ 

So yes, Martha got her priorities wrong sometimes. She could be distracted and reluctant.¹⁵ But she believed. She heard what Jesus told her and took it to heart. Even in her deepest grief, even when it was unclear to her why Jesus hadn’t done things differently, she believed.

Praise God that he allows us to do the same – and offers us his very self and Son, the resurrection and the life, the one through whom we might never die, when we do.

Footnotes

¹ If you’d like to have a look at last week’s post, there’s a link in the box on the right.

² This is hilarious for two reasons: first, Jacob was the world champion of deceiving himself, and second, he only noticed that it was Leah the morning after he’d already slept with her. Exactly how extraordinarily drunk was he?

³ It’s all in Genesis 29: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+29&version=ESVUK. Go on, if you don’t check it, how do you know I’m not just making it up?

⁴ See Exodus 1: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+1&version=ESVUK.

⁵ The story is found in Numbers 27, which probably explains why more people aren’t familiar with it: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers+27&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Judges 4 for the story and 5 for the poetry: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges+4-5&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Krish Kandiah is quite good on this topic in Paradoxology: “The existence of evil in the world is at one and the same time – paradoxically, if you like – a sign of the mercy of God. He is withholding his judgement from the earth, giving every last chance for people to seek him. But God’s patience does have a limit to its elasticity. He will ultimately show himself as a God who is just … When bad things happen, we want to know where God is and why he won’t intervene. When he does intervene we question his right to execute judgement … His patience is meaningless without his eventual judgement; his judgement is merciless without his extreme patience … In fact, the very inclusion in the Bible of these stories [here referring to the book of Joshua, but equally applicable to all uncomfortably judgement-y stories], challenging as it is, may be a mercy in itself – like a warning shot across the bows to help remind a straying ship that God’s patience is long, but it will not last for ever.” Kandiah, Krish, Paradoxology, London: Hodder & Stoughton (2014).

⁸ See 1 Samuel 25 for the whole story: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+25&version=ESVUK.

⁹ One of the very few occasions when the answer isn’t Jesus, as goes the Sunday-school cliché.

¹⁰ 1 Kings 22 or 2 Chronicles 34 both tell the story very similarly. Here’s the Kings, because why not: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+22:14&version=ESVUK.

¹¹ “The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.” Jeremiah 1:1-2. Similarly, “The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.” Zephaniah 1:1.

¹² It comes at the end of Luke 10: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10&version=ESVUK.

¹³ Yes, that is a reference to something, in case you thought I was just being extremely odd (and who, after all, could blame you? It wouldn’t be the first time). Matthew 7 and Luke 6 are equally good sources, but I’ll arbitrarily supply the Matthew: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7&version=ESVUK.

¹⁴ John 11. Go. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+11&version=ESVUK.

¹⁵ I say ‘reluctant’ based on her comment about the odour a few verses after the section I quoted, proving, among countless other examples, that it’s by no means a case that once one has confessed faith, one is going to be unquestionably obedient all the time.