I Want to See the Mountains Again Gandalf

Summertime is usually my well-nigh productive time every bit a reader. Just not this yr. This summer I read the first book of Elisabeth Elliot's biography, and the first 141 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring. The slow plodding through the latter is in part due to the fact that equally much as I love the story, Tolkien isn't always the easiest matter for me to pick upwardly and read at the terminate of the long day. But another correspondent to the tedious progress is the fact that I couldn't get past one of the things Bilbo said in the opening chapters.

"I want to meet mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and and so find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and tranquility, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bong. I might find somewhere where I can end my book. I have idea of a prissy catastrophe for it: and he lived happily always after to the end of his days." (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

When I commencement read those words, I was shocked to find my optics watering. Why was I crying over an quondam Bilbo complaining about the duties and calls of mean solar day to twenty-four hours life, and asking to see some mountains? This wasn't emotional. This wasn't climactic. This wasn't where someone was supposed to cry.

Yet here I was, tears running down my face every bit I lay in bed with the prune-on booklight the but matter keeping me from being enveloped by the darkness. I turned it off, rolled over, and with the tears on my pillow case, went to sleep. I was simply emotional. I'd exist fine in the morning.

But I wasn't. The quote lingered in my mind as I washed dishes, got ready for work, drove to the grocery store, answered telephone calls, prepared for Bible report, and finally found myself once over again in bed, trying to comprehend why this had hit me and so deeply, when it finally clicked.

Bilbo longed for remainder.

Rest from the distractions of each day. Rest from the duties. Residue from the noise. Rest from the discord. Balance. Uninterrupted, un-threatened residue.

And I long for rest, too.

I had hoped that this summer would bring rest, but it didn't, at least, not the kind I was looking for. Physically, working 2 jobs and being in school full-fourth dimension doesn't leave a lot of room for resting. Spiritually, this summer brought on a host of stretching opportunities as I wrestled with my own fears, doubts, and sin. Mentally, news has continued to pour in of heartbreak, injustice, devastation, and ignorance.

Rest often feels similar a dream, not a reality, doesn't it?

But dear friends, it is non just a dream. It is real and it is ours for the taking. Because rest is non always a vacation, or political unity, or peaceful worldwide interactions. It isn't ever an empty schedule, or the elimination of bad news, or the absence of grief. I'm learning that in this earth, rest is knowing Christ. It is being known past Him, hiding in Him, finding hope in an eternal future with Him. Information technology is finding the everlasting artillery underneath as each moving ridge of fearfulness, exhaustion, sorrow, and cataclysm slam into us. Information technology is knowing that we are loved, held fast, and remembered. It is knowing that while this life doesn't experience like rest, in that location is a twenty-four hour period coming when we volition reach a kingdom of untainted beauty, where at that place will exist no more distractions, no more interruptions, no more than tears, no more ending. There will be peace, quiet, and joy.

At that place volition be balance.

And of the people in that kingdom, it will be written, "They lived happily ever after, post-obit the end of their days."

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Source: https://thecornershelf.com/2021/08/30/i-want-to-see-mountains-gandalf-mountains/