There’s a great moment near the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that I’ve been pondering recently. The scene is set in Osgiliath, a military outpost on the edge of the noble kingdom of Gondor. Osgiliath is under siege, targeted by dragons that are dive-bombing it from the sky and ripping its ramparts to pieces. As soldiers scurry for cover, two hobbits – Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee – huddle together by a flight of stairs. Months ago, these hobbits had left their homes in the Shire, bearing a dark and powerful ring toward the distant land of Mordor. They had known then that their road would be a difficult and dangerous one. However, nothing could have prepared them for the horrors they would face along the way.

Leaning against a wall, Frodo groans in despair: “I can’t do this, Sam.” Sam rises and murmurs in agreement: “I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here.” Then, staring out at the battle raging in Osgiliath, he starts thinking aloud:

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.

Here’s a challenge: take a moment to think about the stories that, in Sam’s words, have “stayed with you” over the years and “meant something” to you. What do those stories have in common? Sam’s words in Osgiliath are a great description of many stories that I love deeply – tales like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River, Richard Adams’ Watership Down, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and of course, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each of these books depicts ordinary folk who are both faced with great evil and swept into a wondrous adventure to strange lands. Additionally, each of them reminds me of another story that has stayed with me over the years: the Bible.

Throughout my life, no story has impacted me as deeply as the stories of the Bible have. As a Christian, I believe that the narratives of this ancient book are God’s words to humanity – which means, of course, that I think they actually happened. This isn’t to say that I find them easy to believe. Honestly, more often than not, I find them strange and fantastical. I’ve wrestled with doubts about the existence of God and the validity of Christianity since middle school (the time when most crises of faith, including puberty, seem to begin). Sometimes, my doubts have been paralyzing, tossing me to and fro like a ship in a storm. Other times, they’ve been present but less palpable, rumbling at the back of my mind like distant thunder.

Yet, as difficult as they are to believe, the stories of Scripture have imbued my life with purpose, offering hope and guidance amidst life’s changing seasons. When I think about my continued faith in Christ, I find myself circling back to Samwise Gamgee’s definition of lasting and meaningful stories. The Bible fulfills this definition better than any other story I know. Additionally, I would argue that many great tales – the kind that really matter – contain echoes of the Biblical story, which J.R.R. Tolkien himself described as “the true myth.” Whether you agree with me or think I’m nuts, this blog post is an invitation to re-examine the stories of Scripture through the eyes of that most eloquent of hobbits: Samwise Gamgee.

“Full of Darkness and Danger They Were”

According to Samwise, great stories are marked by deep suffering. This suffering isn’t the natural order of things, but rather a departure from the way things used to be. Often, it’s so deep that the characters start to wonder if it can possibly be overcome: “How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?” The world that we call home is a deeply broken place. While we may not agree on the scope or significance of the world’s brokenness, its reality confronts us every day: war, hatred, oppression, poverty, greed, corruption, pollution, disease. In the darkness of great tales – the fearsome Black Riders of The Lord of the Rings, the Death Eaters of Harry Potter, the armies of Thanos in the Avengers movies – we glimpse the darkness of our own story.

While we all recognize the world’s brokenness, the stories that we tell make sense of this reality differently. Some stories deny the weightiness of suffering. In religions like Zen Buddhism, enlightenment is reached by detaching oneself from earthly hardships, longings, and concerns. Similarly, many religious people (including some Christians) look forward to an afterlife that is divorced from the stuff of earth – an immaterial paradise beyond the clouds. While we may not agree with these attitudes, you and I are surrounded by an entertainment culture that constantly promotes distraction and escapism as antidotes to suffering.

In his book Long Journey Home, Os Guinness tells the story of a man named Issa, who was one of Japan’s most beloved haiku poets. Issa was well-acquainted with suffering. Before turning thirty years old, he witnessed the death of five of his children. Later, his young wife died as well. Heartbroken, Issa sought counsel from an elder monk, who gave him this advice: “The world is dew.” The monk reminded Issa that his religion required detachment from earthly matters, including the loss of loved ones. Pondering the monk’s words, Issa penned this poem: “The world is dew, / the world is dew – / and yet, / and yet…” In these lines, we don’t hear cold indifference to suffering. We hear the longing of a grieving father and husband – the groaning of a wounded soul. While Issa’s faith made no allowance for the weight of sorrow, his own story was inescapably scarred by it.

Some stories refuse to downplay the world’s darkness and choose instead to resign themselves to it. In these tales, pain and death are intrinsic parts of life. While we can try to alleviate suffering, there isn’t a higher answer for our struggles and sorrows – at least, not one that we can know. Life is hard, and we’ve got to get used to it. This attitude resonates with what we see in nature, which – as Alfred, Lord Tennyson put it in his poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” – is “red in tooth and claw.” In his song “For What It’s Worth,” J Lind describes a familiar scene from a Planet Earth documentary:

Turn it up, this is my favorite part
Watch how the tiger catches the deer in the dark
Its teeth were sharpened by the Darwinian arc
Of a million years

For most of us, this image is routine. While the deer might have a few objections, we don’t question the morality of the tiger’s hunt. However, faced with images of human suffering in the third stanza of J Lind’s song, we start to feel differently:

Look it up, or look across the street
Flies on their faces and nothing on their feet
These little ones will be lucky if they breathe
For a couple years

Faced with extreme examples of human suffering – things like debilitating poverty, starvation, and the death of children – something inside us starts to protest. Though they are everyday realities, these things feel unnatural and wrong in the deepest sense of both words. As philosopher George Steiner puts it in his book Errata, we’re ambushed by the sense that “Something…has gone hideously wrong,” that “Reality could, should have been, otherwise.” While we might encourage resignation in theory, we tend to deny it in practice, especially when we’re confronted with death. To a mother who has lost a child, the statement that suffering is an intrinsic part of life rings incredibly hollow. 

Though we all know that death awaits us, we still kick and scream when it claims those we love. Reminded of our mortality, we resonate with the words of poet Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night. / Old age should burn and rave at close of day. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” For as long as anyone can remember, humans have believed in some form of an afterlife. It could be argued that these beliefs are a coping mechanism – a way to manage our fears of the unknown. But what if they’re actually an instinct pointing toward something true about our world? What if death feels unnatural because it is? What if we can’t imagine disappearing because we were never meant to disappear?

Some stories promote human effort as the solution to the world’s problems. These tales can be found not only in philosophies of secular humanism, but also in religions that advocate merit-based salvation. Sure, our lives are messy now. But it’s nothing we can’t fix. Give us enough time, and we’ll get things straightened out. This position sounds eminently hopeful. Surely, humanity has come a long way throughout history. However, from where I’m standing, the world looks just as broken as it has always been. Old sins have given way to new ones: weapons of mass destruction, rampant greed and materialism, wars sparking massive refugee movements, pollution and deforestation, the normalization of abortion. From the swords of Rome to the cannons of the colonizers to the tanks and bombs of World War II, we humans have proven ourselves incapable of fixing the mess we’re in. 

I know my own heart too well to put my faith in humanity. As N.T. Wright says in his book Simply Christian, “The line between justice and injustice, between things being right and things not being right, can’t be drawn between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It runs right down through the middle of each one of us.” My heart is fractured by the same selfishness and complacency that I see in the world. Despite my best efforts to do good, I still compromise on my convictions, make stupid choices, and hurt the people I love. I resonate with the wayward spaceman in J Lind’s song “The Astronaut (Part II)”:

Behold the astronaut, so far from home
He washed up on a shore unknown
He’d build a tower out of stone
But all he sees is sand

Mistaking confidence for competence
He calls himself an optimist
And builds until the sand is wet
And running through his hands

Like Samwise Gamgee, the story of the Bible depicts suffering and death as realities that are both weighty and unnatural. In the Book of Genesis, God designs the first humans to live in harmony with himself, with each other, and with the earth (Genesis 1:16-29). However, he also gives them free will, warning them that rebellion against the created order will bring death into the world (Genesis 2:16-17). The sin of Adam and Eve is more than just a naughty deed. It’s a symbolic act of defiance – a refusal to submit to the Creator of the cosmos. The Bible tells us that all of the world’s brokenness – shame, toil, pain, dysfunctional relationships, exile, and death – can be traced to that fateful choice (Genesis 3:8-24), which humans have been repeating ever since. In the wake of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, the story of the Bible is a long train wreck – a grisly account of people destroying each other, neglecting the earth, and refusing to heed God’s warnings. 

This is the fallout from the fall. We were created to live under our Maker’s authority. Left to our own devices, we rupture and fall apart. There’s a reason why we shiver when the Black Riders arrive in the Shire, when Voldemort’s servants slink into Hogwarts, and when Thanos’ spaceship touches down on planet earth. In the opening pages of the Bible, we’re told that there has been an invasion. Something, indeed, has gone horribly wrong.

“When the Sun Shines”

In his monologue at Osgiliath, Samwise Gamgee says that great stories are marked not only by deep suffering, but also by intense beauty. The kind of beauty that Sam describes isn’t tame. It’s powerful and persistent – a light made all the more vibrant by the darkness that threatens to extinguish it: “A new day will come, and when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer.” Each of us has experienced the thrill of losing ourselves in a well-told tale, whether we found ourselves strolling the grassy slopes of the Shire, touching snow-covered branches where the back of a wardrobe should be, or hearing the whistle of a train puffing into Platform 9 & 3/4. The wonder we feel when lost in a story is an echo of a truth that we all too easily forget: despite its darkness, our world remains far more beautiful than it needs to be.

I hope you’ve been getting outside during this quarantine. Even in the frozen tundra of Michigan, where it sometimes feels like it’s “always winter, but never Christmas,” the earth is coming alive again. Recently, on a walk through the farmlands surrounding my home, I was repeatedly ambushed by the arresting beauty of Springtime: the rich smell of furrowed soil, the new grass gleaming green in afternoon sunlight, the yawning sea of electric blue sky. As I walked, each bend in the dirt road became a doorway to a strange new land.

We’ve all encountered beautiful landscapes that took our breath away. According to author G.K. Chesterton, this is one of the reasons why fantasy stories – in particular fairy tales – resonate with us. By beckoning us into unfamiliar territory, where the rules of our universe are upended and anything can happen, stories of magic invite us to re-examine the strangeness and beauty of the people, landscapes, and creatures that surround us. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton put it this way: 

“We all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough… These tales say apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found out that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”

If you’re anything like me, encounters with intense beauty fill you with a fierce appreciation for the planet you call home – a feeling that life, as Chesterton described it, “is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege.” It’s the sense of being given a lavish (even downright excessive) gift that you could never hope to repay. It’s wondering, “Why on earth do I get to live in a world of sunrises and sunsets, of wolves and whales, of music and mountains, of constellations and the color green?” G.K. Chesterton had a similar response to the world’s beauty:

“The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts into their stockings gifts or toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?”

Faced with intense beauty, we don’t turn inward. Whether we’re listening to the drumbeat of thunder and rain, feeling the warmth of sand between our toes, savoring the tang of fresh coffee, or smelling the salty spray of seawater, experiences of intense beauty pull us out of ourselves, reawakening awe and appreciation for the miracle of ordinary life.

One of the most startling things about beauty is its resilience. Despite all the struggles, sicknesses, and sorrows that surround us, people are still singing songs and telling tales that celebrate life’s beauty. During the summer and fall of 2017, I had the opportunity to live and study in an urban slum community in a Southeast Asian country. My neighbors were scavengers who made their living by picking through the city’s trash for recyclable materials. Their lives were very hard. Yet, when I think back on the time I spent with them, I’m flooded with memories of beauty: friends swapping stories over coffee and cigarettes, mothers cooking delicious meals, families decorating their homes with items salvaged from trash heaps, neighbors singing karaoke music late into the night. These creative activities weren’t coping mechanisms. In the midst of their poverty, my neighbors affirmed G.K. Chesterton’s description of life as a gift to be cherished: “The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale.”

In his song “For What It’s Worth,” J Lind describes similarly striking celebrations of life’s beauty among the people of India:

And the women laugh from their cages in Bombay
As the children clap from Calcutta-bound freight trains
And their song is lost to the chaos of the earth
But they still lift up holy hands for what it’s worth

Pondering the stark contrast between this brokenness and the beauty of the earth, Lind writes these words in his song “Letter to the Editor”:

No, I don’t want to love in spite of it
Like it’s just some sad mistake
No, I would rather love because of it
Oh, the contrast that creates
All of the colors found with every twist 
Of this kaleidoscopic fate
Yes, I’d like to learn to love it anyway

In the midst of deep suffering, simple acts of creativity and kindness “shine out the clearer,” as Samwise Gamgee puts it. More surprising than the brutal reality of my neighbors’ poverty was the fierce persistence of their joy. More shocking than the oppression of Nazi Germany was the resistance of ordinary men and women who risked their lives to rescue people they’d never met. More startling than the contemporary refugee crisis is the multitude of people who have opened their homes to strangers from distant lands, sacrificing their time, energy, and money to help foreigners feel welcome. Instead of extinguishing light, darkness only augments light’s beauty.

One of my favorite scenes from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King occurs on the molten slopes of Mount Doom, where Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee are fighting to draw breath in a firestorm. Cradling an exhausted Frodo in his arms, with smoke and sulfur raining down around him, Sam sustains his friend with memories of their homeland: “Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be Spring soon, and the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the barley in the lower fields. And they’ll be eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?” Surrounded by the hellish fires of Mordor, Sam’s memories of the Shire burn with a deeper and holier light.

In sharp contrast to stories that encourage detachment from the earth or that view nature as an accidental byproduct of blind forces, the story of Scripture contends that our universe is ablaze with purpose. In the Book of Genesis, we meet a God who creates beautiful things – not out of necessity or boredom, but out of sheer joy. After speaking the earth into existence, God blesses each part of it and declares that it is “good” (Genesis 1:3-31). God commands the first humans to cultivate the earth, to build families, and to enjoy the bounty of creation (Genesis 1:26, 28-29). According to the Bible, every beautiful thing in the world – from the petals of a dandelion to the peaks of the Himalayas – is the handiwork of a master artist.

Though nature has been ravaged by humanity’s misdeeds, it still bears the mark of its Maker’s hand: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). The world of Scripture is far more than a stagnant backdrop for human activity. It’s a place of magic – a land of wonders that thrums with life and praise: “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy (Psalm 96:11-12). Humanity is God’s masterpiece. We are made in our Creator’s image (Genesis 1:27), woven with all the intricacy of a beautiful tapestry: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14). Additionally, acts of love and courage that fulfill God’s purposes are described as deeply beautiful: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news…who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ (Isaiah 52:7).

According to the Bible, we have every reason to be grateful. Our planet is indeed a gift that we could never hope to repay. In the pages of Scripture, we also find reason for the resilience of beauty: the Creator has not abandoned his world, but rather still holds each part of it together (Colossians 1:17). His love sustains world’s light: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). His presence still haunts the hollows of the earth. In Scripture, we glimpse a truth that great stories have always hinted at: the world outside our front doors has always been more wild and wondrous than Middle Earth, more strange and surprising than Narnia, more magical and mysterious than Hogwarts. If we listen closely, we might hear the grizzled voice of Gandalf the Grey whispering in our ears: “The world isn’t in your books and maps, it’s out there.”

“Even Darkness Must Pass”

At the heart of Samwise Gamgee’s description of great stories is this statement: “But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.” According to Sam, great stories depict the triumph of light over darkness. This isn’t to say that great stories can’t have sad endings (personally, I’m a sucker for sad movies). As we’ve seen already, acknowledgement of the world’s brokenness is a crucial part of any great story. However, the victory of good over evil is a common trope of many great stories, especially the fantasy tales, epic quests, and superhero sagas that kindle our imaginations. In the end, no matter the cost, Sauron’s ring must be destroyed. Voldemort, invincible though he seems, must be killed. There must be some way to reverse Thanos’ fateful snap. Even the Star Wars trilogies, which borrow Zen Buddhist ideas of an eternal balance between light and darkness, must end with the triumph of the Jedi over the Sith. G.K. Chesterton made a similar observation about children’s stories: “Fairy tales don’t teach children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales teach children the dragons can be killed.” 

Recently, I saw a video of an experiment in which little children were shown two versions of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: the original version, and an alternate version that ended with the Beast’s death (if this experiment sounds sick and twisted to you, then you might be a Disney fan). The kids were asked which version they preferred, and why. Overwhelmingly, they preferred the original version (surprise!), which concluded with a wedding and a reunion of characters. This experiment confirms what we already know: from a young age, we’re hardwired for happy endings. However, we’re left wondering: Is our longing for happy endings simply wish-fulfillment, something that we all outgrow with time? Do we really have any reason to expect that our own stories will end happily?

Like many great stories, the Bible affirms the victory of goodness and life over evil and death. However, if this affirmation is to ring true, then the solution must be as multifaceted as the problem (if you ever had your heart broken by the ending of the TV show Lost, then you know exactly what I’m talking about). Here, in my opinion, is where the Bible outpaces the competition. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we encounter a climax that takes seriously both the weight of the world’s brokenness and the intensity of the world’s beauty. 

In Jesus’ trial by Jewish authorities and execution at the hands of Roman soldiers, we witness many consequences of human evil: betrayal, abandonment by friends, isolation, a corrupt justice system, torture, and mob brutality. In contrast to stories that downplay the world’s darkness, the cross affirms that humanity’s sin is incredibly costly. Evil deeds create wounds that can’t be glossed over or ignored. Injustice demands a reckoning, and the inevitable outcome of our rebellion against God is death (Romans 6:23). In contrast to tales that resign themselves to the world’s darkness, the cross affirms that there is a solution for sin and suffering – one that we can know. On the cross, the Son of God chooses to take our place, bearing the punishment that we deserve and offering us his track record of perfect obedience in return: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And in contrast to stories that advocate human effort as the solution, the cross affirms that this rescue operation is entirely God’s initiative: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

While confronting the world’s brokenness, the cross of Christ also declares creation’s beauty. In the person of Jesus, the Maker of time and space himself stepped into time and space, taking on flesh and bone. In doing so, God affirmed the value of the material world – the sacredness of the landscapes and bodies that we were always meant to inhabit. Rather than discarding his wounded creation, God reaffirms his statements in Genesis 1, which J Lind references in his song “It is Good”:

It is good, it is good
The water, the fire – the spirit, earth, and wind
It is good, it is good
And I would do it all again

Furthermore, in light of the cross, humanity has good reason for the kind of gratitude that G.K. Chesterton described. The Giver of earth has offered us another gift that we could never hope to repay: eternal life with God (John 3:16). We’ve been given the opportunity to become beautiful artwork – the people who we were always meant to be: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Additionally, Jesus’ self-sacrificial death displays the resilience of beauty. For over two thousand years, this selfless act has inspired countless other acts of creativity and compassion. People are still paying it forward.

If the story ended there, we’d have an epic and deeply moving conclusion – something like the finale of Avengers: Endgame. Yet, what truly sets the Bible apart from other tales is what happened after Good Friday. While the cross squared off against the world’s brokenness, the resurrection proclaims the utter defeat of brokenness at the hands of beauty. For followers of Christ, sin and suffering will not have the last word. Death – the Great Invader – has been mortally wounded. If Christ is risen, then our bodies aren’t destined for decay: “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” (1 Corinthians 6:14). According to Scripture, we aren’t looking forward to an escape from this earth. Rather, we’re looking forward to a renewed planet (Revelation 21:1) – a world of sunrises and sunsets, wolves and whales, music and mountains, constellations and the color green.

To many people, this resurrection hope seems incredibly naive – a fool’s hope at best. But as Andrew Peterson suggests in his book Adorning the Dark, “a fool’s hope may be the best kind.” Like Samwise Gamgee, those of us who have trusted in Christ have awoken in a warm bed after a difficult and dangerous road, laughing with bewildered joy: “Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“Their Joy Was Like Swords”

Near the end of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, there’s a moment when a minstrel rises to sing for the people of Gondor, who have gathered in the city of Minas Tirith. It is a time of great rejoicing. Against all odds, Mordor has crumbled, and Sauron has been overthrown. The Ring of Power has been destroyed once and for all, carried to its demise by two brave hobbits. Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee are among the crowd, recently recovered from their grim ascent of Mount Doom. Addressing the people, the minstrel introduces his song: 

“‘Lo! lords and knights and men of valour unashamed, kings and princes, and fair people of Gondor, and Riders of Rohan, and ye sons of Elrond, and Dunedain of the North, and Elf and Dwarf, and greathearts of the Shire, and all free folk of the West, now listen to my lay. For I will sing to you of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.”

Hearing these words, Samwise Gamgee is overwhelmed: 

“And when Sam heard that he laughed aloud for sheer delight, and he stood up and cried: ‘O great glory and splendour! And all my wishes have come true!’ And then he wept.” 

Why does Sam respond this way to the minstrel’s ballad? In the fortress of Osgiliath, Sam had found hope in the memory of great stories – “the ones that really mattered.”. In Minas Tirith, he hears his own story sung, and realizes with sudden joy that he has been living in one of those tales all along. Like the stories that “stayed with you” and “meant something,” Sam’s own story has been full of brokenness – of “darkness and danger” that threatened to snuff out the light. Yet, as in those stories, darkness has passed. A new day has come. Rather than being forgotten, Sam’s suffering has been woven into the song, making it all the more remarkable. His brokenness has been turned into beauty. According to Scripture, this redemption is the destiny of God’s people: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

After all these years, this is why I keep coming back to the Bible. In its pages, I glimpse what I believe to be the greatest story ever told – the tale of a world that, in songwriter Andrew Peterson’s words, was created good, has fallen, and will be redeemed again. And do you want to know the craziest part? When I pick up that ancient book and sit down to read, I see us there in its pages – you and me. I find myself nodding in agreement with G.K. Chesterton: “I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a storyteller.” There’s a reason why great stories resonate with our hearts. These tales are, after all, only echoes of the story we’re living in. Like Samwise Gamgee, I can’t wait to hear how it ends:

“And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”

About a month ago, my little brother and I were driving through the hills of western Pennsylvania, watching the fiery colors of autumn flash by the windows. We had just left the home of one of my college roommates and were on our way to visit another roommate in Maryland. To pass the time, my brother popped the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack into the car’s CD player. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then you know that I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan. J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories are very close to my heart. So I was already feeling pretty darn wistful by the time the final track – “The Breaking of the Fellowship” – rolled around. As I listened to the melancholy strings and brass, I pictured Frodo and Sam leaving their companions and rowing away across the Anduin river. The time that my brother and I had spent with my friend in Pennsylvania had been wonderful, chock-full of laughter and goofiness and reminiscing. Now, like Frodo’s time with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, it was at an end. I had wept when I said goodbye to my college roommates after graduation. Now, after saying goodbye again, I felt a familiar ache in the pit of my stomach. In spite of my attempts to elude and forestall it, farewell had tracked me down again, creeping up behind me with all the inevitability of autumn’s chill.

I’ve been thinking about goodbyes a lot recently. This autumn has been a season of changes for me and for my family, transitions mirrored in the tumbling leaves, swaying corn stalks, and honking geese winging their way southward across the sky near our home. Early in October, my little sister and her new husband hurried off to start their honeymoon as friends and family showered them with leaves. Later that month, my grandparents rented a U-haul and moved back home to Florida to resume the ministry that God was calling them to. As October drew to a close, I found myself saying goodbyes to two beloved friends on the East Coast. Throughout November, I said more goodbyes to residents who were graduating from the group home where I work. Recently, I’ve been repeat-listening to Ben Shive’s amazing album The Ill-Tempered Klavier, a collection of songs that reflect on love, loss, the passing of time, and the changes of growing old.

I’ve always hated saying goodbye, whether it’s parting with loved ones or watching the sky darken after sunset. Yet, in spite of my frustration, goodbyes remain a fact of life. I guess I’d better learn to make my peace with them. But how to do it? I’m in the thick of this struggle and don’t have all the answers yet. However, I hope that what I’m learning along the way can be an encouragement to you if, like me, you’ve wrestled with the bittersweet burden of leaving and letting go.

Nothing for the Ache

Goodbye is an intruder who we were never meant to meet. In the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we learn that the first humans were created to experience intimacy with each other and with their Maker. They were also given a shared calling to till the land and care for the creatures that God had entrusted them with. However, when Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, they started to experience multifaceted brokenness: distance from their Creator, disunity in their relationship with each other, and exile from the garden they called home. Ultimately, humanity began to experience death, which is the ultimate goodbye. Loneliness and distrust had erupted into relationships that were once marked by harmony.

The painful goodbyes that we experience are the rubble of that ancient rebellion, the aftershock of an explosion which has reverberated through history into the present. We all long for lasting fulfillment. We yearn for relationships that will stand the test of time. But despite our best efforts and intentions, time continues its relentless forward march. Old friends move on, loved ones pass away, and trusted companions let us down. Thrills subside and highs give way to hangovers. All songs and tales must come to an end. Although our world has had thousands of years to get its act together, society continues to fall apart at the seams, ravaged by violence, oppression, deception, and greed. Scientists even predict that our expanding universe is over-stretching itself, chugging toward an inevitable heat death that will grind stars and planets to a halt. Whether or not we acknowledge these gloomy forecasts, we know the ache of loss all too well. It never seems to get easier. As the Lumineers sing, “Nobody knows how to say goodbye. It sounds so easy ’till you try.”

Despite the fact that we in America have more opportunities to distract, amuse, and comfort ourselves than ever before, the consistently high rates of drug abuse, divorce, and suicide in our nation testify to the truth that deep loneliness and heartache persist, rumbling underneath us like a fault line. Again and again, after trying and failing to make our pleasure and contentment last, we find that the things of this world don’t satisfy our longings. We feel the weighty truth expressed in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say” (Ecclesiastes 1:7-8). We discover, as Ben Shive sings, that

There’s nothing for the ache,
the groaning of a heart about to break.
You’ll notice when you lie in bed awake,
feeling like you’re falling.

Beyond the Last Goodbye

While we cannot escape goodbyes, the anger and sorrow that we feel when they come upon us are signposts pointing towards hope.  Despite their intransigence, loss and death are impostors that have wounded God’s good creation, and for all impostors there comes a reckoning. Goodbye will not have the last word. 

The same Bible that begins with a heartbreaking goodbye ends with a joyous reunion. In the Book of Revelation, we read about the promise of a new heavens and a new earth, where God will once again dwell with his people. Ironically, this coming renewal of all things was made possible by a farewell: Jesus Christ’s self-sacrificial death for sinners. When Jesus’ followers watched as their friend’s emaciated body was stowed in a tomb, they said goodbye to their hopes for a promised Messiah, the long-awaited prophet-king who would rescue them from sin and oppression. But when, on Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared to them again, as flesh-and-blood alive as he had ever been, they realized with bewildered joy that something had changed. Reality had been shaken by a seismic shift. Death itself had been mortally wounded. Resurrection – new life – was the destiny of God’s people. If Christ could rise from the dead, then all that had been broken by the Fall could be restored – in society, in the human heart, and in the very soil itself.

The hope kindled by Jesus’ resurrection reminds God’s people that even the passing of time will be redeemed. The apostle Paul tells us that “this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). Like everything else in this world, our suffering will pass away. Beyond the last goodbye, just over the horizon, Jesus is preparing a lasting home for his people – a kingdom where truth and justice will soar like banners over a rampart. As someone wise once said, “Our future is as bright as the promises of God.”

Freed to Let Go

In light of this hope, how should we live in this land where goodbyes remain a fact of life? For starters, our relationship with our Creator and Savior has got to come first. This is a tough one for me. Jesus said this to his disciples: “He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37-38). If I’m honest with myself, I’ve got to admit that I invest a lot more time and energy in my relationships with other people than in my relationship with the One who made me. I care far more about what others think of me than about what God thinks of me. I try desperately to please people, and when inevitably I let them down or don’t measure up to my own expectations, I beat myself up on the inside. When relationships change or dissolve, I feel bitter and irritable, questioning why God’s plan for my life doesn’t match my ideals and why the people around me don’t either. I yearn for lasting community, for a place where I’m known and loved as I am. But to be honest, most of the time I just feel lonely. 

Whether by their own faults or by the unexpected changes of time, the people we love will let us down. Truth is, they were never meant to satisfy our deepest longings or alleviate the ache. They weren’t designed to carry the weight of our expectations, and expecting them to do so does them a deep disservice. Pastor Tim Keller once gave a lecture at my college’s chapel, and I remember him saying that if we build our identity on our relationships with others, then we end up placing a crushing burden on them and on ourselves. Too many marriages rupture because of selfishness – unrealistic and unreasonable expectations of what the other partner should be doing to make us happy. Singer-songwriter Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot recognized this danger and discussed it in relation to his song “Enough to Let Me Go”:

In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial-driven culture we can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. “Perhaps if I found the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair.” But of course no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that role. But the silence can be deafening. It’s a fearful thing to be alone… “I can’t live without you” – “I would die if you ever left me” – These are not the songs of love. These are the songs of consumption.

We were created to desire a relationship with our Creator, and no human relationship can satisfy that desire. If we expect people to fulfill our needs in an ultimate sense, then we’re setting ourselves up for crushing disappointment. Alternatively, if our self-worth is rooted in the love of God, which doesn’t change, then our love for others becomes the overflow of that faithful, self-sacrificial love. Resting in the unconditional love of God, we are freed to see people as they are – as broken, complicated souls capable of great evil and great goodness. We are freed to love people as they are and not as we want them to be, which is exactly how God loves us. Rather than stifling people, we are freed to give them space to grow and learn, freed to let them try and stumble and get up again on their individual journeys. Like a mother who watches her child leave home, we are freed to let them go, knowing that we can’t hold them forever and trusting that they are carried in the hands of God. Liberated from the burden of expectations, we can ask of others the question that Jon Foreman asks in his song: “Do you love me enough to let me go?”

Here There Be Dragons

Living in the light of resurrection hope, we can savor each good thing that we experience in this world as a foretaste of the glory to come. Knowing that the destiny of this fractured world is not merely destruction, but re-creation, we can delight in sunrises and sunsets, whales and wolves, music and movies, constellations and cornfields. The good things that God has made will not be lost. Resurrection isn’t a helicopter air-lifting us out of this crumbling kingdom. It’s a seed planted in the heart of the earth, an antidote coursing through the soil and groundwater until all is green again. 

Art is a wonderful gift to creatures bound by time. By challenging us to pause and notice, to look for beauty in the seemingly ordinary, art draws our gaze past the gifts themselves to the Giver and Artist who fashioned them for our delight. This world isn’t just a backdrop for human activity. This world was made to be wondered at, to be adventured in. Here there be dragons. If we keep our eyes open, we’ll never run out of reasons to sing praises. “Earth’s crammed with heaven, ” wrote poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “and every common bush afire with God.” Rich Mullins recognized something similar when he sang: 

There’s more that dances on these prairies than the wind
and more that pulses in the ocean than the tide.
There’s a love that is fiercer than the love between friends,
more gentle than a mother’s when a baby’s at her side.

There’s a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiments
and a music higher than the songs that I can sing.
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance
I owe only to the giver of all good things.

We’re finite beings with only so much time to give. We won’t get to do all the things that we’d like to do, or have the impact on the world that we might hope to have. There are only 24 hours in a day, and darn it, some of those hours require sleep (freshman year of college notwithstanding). Each day is a gift to be treasured, a song of intense beauty made all the more precious by its finitude. As Ben Shive sings, “Every day is the day to say goodbye.” Yet if no good thing is lost, then the acts of love that we undertake in the present will have eternal consequences, both for us and for those we serve. Seemingly small and insignificant acts of kindness may have stronger repercussions than we could ever have imagined. When we love people by telling them about Jesus, we’re both warning them about the reckoning that is coming and inviting them to join in the victory dance – the eternal celebration made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection. None of this love will go to waste. In Christ, we’re able to live like each day like its our last, while knowing in our bones that it isn’t. As Andy Gullahorn sings in his song “The Other Side,”

When that day comes, don’t look back.
Love will be the bags you pack
for the other side.

On and On and On

If we keep our eyes and hearts open, God has a way of ambushing us with hope, stoking the fires of our souls with small moments of magic that remind us of his promises and enable us to keep going. As my brother and I drove through the Pennsylvania autumn with “The Breaking of the Fellowship” thrumming in our speakers, the road leveled off and the hills before us gave way to an expanse of brilliant blue sky, framed like a photograph between walls of rock. Listening to the sawing of strings and the muffled thunder of drums, gazing up into that endless sky, I was reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis that I had read a long time ago: “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” While saying farewell to my friend in Pennsylvania had been painful, I was excited by the ways I’d seen God working in his life. The goodbyes that my college roommates and I had said to each other after graduation had made possible new beginnings for all of us – new work, new relationships, new adventures bringing new struggles and new joys. Like a shoot from a buried seed, new life had sprouted from loss.

There are moments when I wish I could turn back the clock, freeze the frame, and forestall the future. I struggle to believe that what’s ahead is better than what’s behind. Lord, help my unbelief. However, there are other moments when God pulls the curtain back a little bit, just enough to let me see some horizon. When that happens, I’m reminded that just as autumn’s chill is inevitable, springtime is inevitable too. I’m reminded that the Kingdom is coming, that through Christ it has already begun, and that no force of Hell can stop it. I’m reminded that, as Ben Shive sings, “Love is the reason the past is gone and the world turns on.” Hallelujah. Come, Lord Jesus.

I can think of no better way to end these ramblings than with yet another Ben Shive lyric:

Do you remember, when the morning fills the sky,
how all our darkest dreams surrender to the coming of the light?
And when I brush aside this curtain, I’ll find you shining like the dawn.
Beyond the ending of this world, we’ll go on and on and on.

One of my earliest memories is of my dad reading to my brothers and me before bedtime. I remember laying propped up on my elbows, listening as Dad worked his way through old paperback copies of Watership Down and The Fellowship of the Ring. As he read, my head swirled with images of dark forests where strange beasts lurked, of weary travelers marching with swords and shields slung over their shoulders, of dragon caves buried deep in the bones of the mountains. Though some of the details in the stories went over my head, I still felt them stirring something inside me: a wild longing to pack my bags, lace up my tennis shoes, and take off into the unknown with a band of trusty companions. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to pick up a sword and fight alongside the good guys (and I spent many hours trying to do so by attacking my brothers with a plastic lightsaber). I wanted to join the fellowship on their quest.

However, looking back on the years that followed those early tales, I’ve realized that most of my life has actually been a quest for fellowship.

My search for intimate community played itself out in different ways as I grew up. In elementary school, it was an effort to connect with other kids through storytelling: wacky skits and puppet shows and a hand-drawn fantasy game that my friends and I played at recess (my own version of Dungeons & Dragons, where battles for the fate of the world were decided by a paperclip spun around the pointy end of a pencil). In middle school, it was an inseparable friendship with a buddy at church, built around skateboarding and comic art and goofiness, and then a slow drifting apart as his parents divorced and I started struggling with anxiety and depression. In high school, it was a restless attempt to win people’s approval with my performance in academics, sports, theater, and choir. In college, it was the unexpected discovery of a different kind of community, which was strengthened by vulnerability – a group of broken people who gradually became family. Now, post-college, it’s been a process of saying goodbyes, meeting new friends, and wondering what community might look like in the months and years to come.

What does true fellowship involve? Why do some friendships thrive while others fall apart or disappear? What does it look like to cultivate community in uncharted territory? These questions have been on my mind a lot recently. I don’t have all the answers yet (a shocking turn of events), but I’ve learned a couple lessons along the journey through the wisdom of others and my own knuckle-headed attempts to love and be loved. I hope these ramblings can be food for thought and an encouragement to you wherever you’re at in your own quest for community. Here goes nothin’…

The Given Life

“My friends ain’t the way I wish they were
They are just the way they are.”
– Rich Mullins, “Brother’s Keeper”

Many books, movies, and songs portray intimate friendship as something that happens instantaneously, like awkwardness in a gathering of middle schoolers. You cross paths with someone whose interests, personality, and values seem to align perfectly with yours, clean as a cookie cutter, and before you know it, you’re inseparable.

We all long for close relationships with people who really understand us. We yearn for unbreakable, Frodo-and-Sam-type bonds with friends who will stick by us through thick and thin, come hell or high water. However, while there may be some instances where this kind of friendship springs up quickly and easily, often it seems to elude us. Old friendships dissolve with time and distance, or we’re hurt and neglected by people we trusted, or the relationships that we do have never seem to move beyond superficial things. All of a sudden we feel lost and lonely, wondering if anyone around us really knows or values us. While I’ve experienced seasons of deep, strong friendship, I’ve also experienced painful seasons of loneliness. Some of those seasons were the result of my own foolish choices, while others were the result of things outside my control. When storms hit and wash away familiar ground, how do we cope?

Once, while leading a Bible study in my college dorm, I compared the friendship of King David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 19-20) to the friendship of Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, hoping to make a point about the importance of finding friends who would remain loyal through life’s hardships. One of the members of the group, a guy named Paul, made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. He said that rather than searching for friends like Frodo and Sam, he had chosen to focus on being that kind of friend to others. His words rang true, touching on the critical distinction between true fellowship and the type of friendship that our culture tends to elevate.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re constantly pressured to be self-centered in our selection of friends. If we’re not careful, our society’s worship of efficiency, status, and comfort all too easily creeps into our relationships. We befriend people who agree with our opinions, who elevate our social status, who make us feel comfortable, and who tell us what we want to hear. On the other hand, we avoid like the plague people who challenge our views, who have nothing to offer us, who irritate us, and who make us feel awkward. We’re taught to chase after friendships that are idealized, where conflicts and sharp edges are smoothed over with the ease and glitter of a Hallmark rom com. In the long run, the result of this selfishness is discontentment. When old friends drift away and the people around us don’t meet our expectations, we become bitter. We start comparing our dwindling, imperfect circles of friends to the perpetually smiling faces on our TV screens, aching for what we don’t have.

What we tend to forget in these periods of discontentment is that the world is a whole lot bigger than us. As poet Wendell Berry put it, “We live the given life, not the planned.” Life has a way of throwing curveballs at us and confounding our plans with plot twists.We can’t pick-and-choose the people who enter our lives any more than we can pick-and-choose where we’re born, who are parents are, or what Hogwarts house we’re in (unless you’re a certain lad with a lightning-shaped scar, of course). Even in the communities that we choose to involve ourselves in, we find ourselves surrounded by people we didn’t put there – strangers whose temperaments, beliefs, and ways of life are often super different from our own. Every day, we rub shoulders with people whom we had no intention of meeting or knowing.

Fellowship isn’t selfish. It’s selfless. It’s not about figuring out what we can get from the people who fit neatly into our personal plans and projects. It’s about figuring out what we can give to the people who are already around us, whether we want them to be there or not. Jesus didn’t tell us to love the people who make us feel good. He told us to love our neighbors. And neighbors are often really good at making us want to flee our neighborhoods and go into hermitage. Likewise, real flesh-and-blood communities have a way of curb-stomping our dreams. As author Parker Palmer once wrote, community is the “place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”

When we stop thinking about what we can get from others and start thinking about what we can give, we can find contentment with the people who surround us at any given time. We can rest as seasons change and storms roll in, recognizing that relationships often change in surprising ways. Instead of expecting people to match our ideals,  we can approach people’s flaws and quirks with grace, remembering that our own lives have rough edges and broken places too. We can cultivate the soil of community, waiting patiently for the rain to fall and keeping at the work even when it doesn’t.

As a kid listening to The Fellowship of the Ring, I didn’t realize that the members of Tolkien’s fellowship didn’t choose to end up on their quest together. Sam, who was the gardener of the Baggins estate, joined Frodo at Gandalf’s request. The unlikely pair happened to run into Merry and Pippin and the rest of their companions en route to their destination. In my own life, some friendships that felt like they were destined to last forever have disappeared over time. On the other hand, some relationships that weren’t nearly as clean-cut have flourished. While my siblings and I often drove each other nuts growing up, they’ve gradually become some of my closest friends. Fellowship isn’t predictable or instantaneous. It takes time and work, and it grows gradually along the road with folks we just so happen to meet along the way.

The Small Stuff

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
– Confucius

In the summer and fall of my senior year of college, I had an amazing opportunity to live and study in an urban community on the island of Java, Indonesia. Although my neighbors were very poor, they managed to be extraordinarily generous and hospitable with what they had. When they weren’t working, people offered to help neighbors with their work, shared meals, and spent hours chatting, smoking cigarettes, and drinking sugary instant coffee together on their doorsteps (I mentioned that I liked black coffee once, and a neighbor told me that was what old people drank). Free time wasn’t a luxury to be hoarded; it was a gift to be shared. By watching their example and participating in their community, I learned a lot about the power of presence and time in relationship-building. Simply by making themselves available to be with each other, people created numerous opportunities for deep relationships to grow.

In a society where ways to distract ourselves from reality are everywhere, where it’s easy to be physically present without being attuned to what’s going on, the simple gifts of time and attentiveness are a big step towards fellowship. Hospitality, the act of opening our homes and helping people feel welcome there, is often said to be a lost art. As an art, it takes creativity and practice, and when done rightly, it’s beautiful and countercultural. One of the things that I admire most about my mom is her ability to make others feel welcome and cared for, whether it’s by crafting a delicious meal, setting up a space that feels inviting, or engaging visitors in conversation. These things seem small, but they’re deeply meaningful, and they add up over time. Fellowship is the product of many small actions and interactions.

My college years contained some crazy shenanigans. There was the time when my roommate Ben and I happened across a couple police officers while wearing ski masks. The annual school ball where another one of my roommates (who shall remain nameless….Dylan….) danced so passionately that he ripped his dress pants right up the back (fortunately Ben happened to have a spare trench coat handy). The time when my roommate Luke and I pretended to be Sherlock Holmes and Watson all around campus. The time when my friends threw me a Pride and Prejudice-themed birthday party and forced me to wear a giant paper dress. The five months of my time overseas when my roommates replaced me with a stuffed bear dressed in my clothing. These are wonderful memories that I’ll never forget. However, looking back, what I miss most about my college experience isn’t the crazy escapades. It’s the small stuff. It’s the many hours that my friends and I spent walking to classes together, grabbing meals in the cafeteria, watching movies, celebrating each other’s birthdays, and just sitting around talking in our apartments.

In The Lord of the Rings, the vast majority of the hobbits’ journey to Mordor didn’t consist of battles with Ringwraiths, orcs, and giant spiders. It consisted of walking. Lots and lots of walking. Walking though fields, walking through forests, walking through swamps, walking over mountains, walking through caves, walking through just about every kind of terrain imaginable. While all of this trekking through nature’s glories tends to be what makes casual readers of the books give up and/or fall asleep before they reach the good parts, it’s the many small moments between the big events that the adventurers’ bonds of loyalty were forged out of. And speaking of forging stuff…

The Hard Truth (a.k.a. The Virtues of Blacksmithing)

“You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.” 
– Proverbs 27:17

My college roommates were really good at making me feel uncomfortable. Luke wasn’t afraid to be goofy or do things in public that were downright embarrassing. As a shy, self-conscious freshman, I found myself being dragged into some strange scenarios: being introduced by Luke to other freshmen as a taxidermy major, being yelled at by Luke in a crowded cafeteria until I relented and gave him a high-five, and listening to Luke belt out the Penn State fight song in public places at an unreasonable volume (I learned the lyrics to this song against my will). Ben was both a romantic soul and a great critical thinker who didn’t shy away from challenging statements that I’d made when he thought they were illogical or biased. As a result, we got into some pretty intense debates (you’re still wrong about Pride and Prejudice and Elihu, Ben). Dylan’s wild creativity and willingness to run with any scenario, no matter how ridiculous that scenario was, kept all of us on our toes.

Gradually, with time and extensive therapy, I came to see these unsettling actions as acts of love. Luke’s goofiness helped me meet new friends and chipped away at my self-consciousness, enabling me to drop my guard and be myself. Ben’s sharp thinking challenged me to evaluate my views, helping me recognize some of my biases and articulate my beliefs with more grace and thoughtfulness. His romantic encouragement also helped me work up the courage to go on dates. Dylan’s off-the-wall humor made me laugh more times than I can count. I’m a much different man than I was when I met these guys, and I can’t thank them enough for that.

At its heart, what distinguishes true fellowship from other kinds of friendship is a commitment to truth-telling. It’s easy to befriend someone who thinks like us, who echoes our opinions, and who laughs at our jokes. It’s a lot harder to befriend someone who gets under our skin, who asks us tough questions, or who calls us out when we start to make compromises. But we don’t grow through comfort. We grow through struggle. Steel has to be pummeled and subjected to blazing heat in order to be refined. True friends don’t tell us what we want to hear. They tell us what we need to hear, even though we may not want to hear it. Truth-telling can be uncomfortable and even painful in the moment, but it strengthens relationships over time. Your friend may feel insulted by your repeated attempts to warn him about the evils of being an Ohio State football fan. However, in the long run, he’ll be grateful for your advice when the world ends and Judgement Day rolls around.

There are different kinds of truth-telling, though. There are ways of telling someone a hard truth that tear them down, that make them feel small and inferior and incapable, and that highlight their shortcomings while glossing over our own. Our world has enough head-bashing and hypocrisy to go around. Alternatively, there are ways of telling someone a hard truth that build that person up, that are motivated by caring and focused on their well-being. This is what the apostle Paul described as “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Truth and love are inseparable. According to pastor Tim Keller, “Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.”

Singer-songwriter Rich Mullins once said, “What I look for in friendship is someone who will beat you up. You get in a big fight and then the winner rides the other guy home on the bike.” I’m so grateful for friends like Ben, Luke, and Dylan who weren’t afraid to beat me up in love. When I said goodbye to them after graduation, what I told each of them was that they’d helped me believe the crazy truth of God’s love for me a little bit more, which is the best gift I can imagine. In their friendship, I glimpsed the love of the God who welcomes me unconditionally, just as I am, and who also continually challenges me to become the person I was made to be – more loving, more just, more merciful, more courageous. More like Jesus Christ.

The Great Reunion

“Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.”
– Frodo Baggins, The Return of the King

For me, one of the most moving scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies happens right before the end of The Return of the King. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin have returned home from their world-saving quest and are sitting in the Green Dragon pub in Hobbiton, sipping mugs of ale. For a few moments, they stare at each other in silence, a wordless understanding of the adventures that they’ve shared passing between them. Then, all at once, they lift their mugs and tap them together. Every time I see that scene, I’m reminded of three men who I never intended to meet – Luke, Ben, and Dylan. I was in a bad place when I entered college – anxious, self-conscious, lonely, and broken by sin that I wanted desperately to hide. While I didn’t realize it then, I can see now that God gave me the ragtag band of companions I had always longed for. I found brothers who took me as I was, who walked with me through many small moments and several big adventures, and who told me the story of grace and redemption that I needed to hear. In the midst of my brokenness, I found a fellowship.

I’ve had to say my goodbyes. I hate doing it, and will until the day I die. I miss old friends deeply, and don’t have a clue where the road ahead will lead. But what I’ve learned, and what I hope you remember, is that life is unpredictable, and all the more beautiful for that; that community, with all of its messiness, is a gift; that our friendships are echoes of a greater Love, which doesn’t disappear, but pursues us wherever we go; and that there is a Great Reunion coming, where “goodbye” will be a forgotten word. When that time comes, if you’re in town and if there happens to be a pub in heaven, I hope you’ll stop by.