Imagine you’re sitting in a cozy chair savoring the silence, when there is a knock at the door, and soon your house is filled with garrulous guests. Famished, they help themselves to the many treats you have carefully stored away in your larder. They strew crumbs everywhere and generally bring chaos to your well-ordered life.
This is the opening chapter of “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien, and one of my favorites in the book. It reminds me of how we can be living quite peacefully until something happens that throws us out of orbit.
Our reaction depends on something more than luck or fortune or happenstance, something deeper and more mysterious. It is called grace.
For Bilbo Baggins, the placid hobbit living a fine existence until the dwarves show up, the initial reaction is definite dismay. He is horrified at the amount of food his guests gobble down, and their questionable manners. But, worst of all, they implore him to do something he desperately fears — which is going on an adventure.
I can definitely relate, although it wasn’t a horde of dwarves that turned my placid existence upside down. Instead, it was the crushing change that came about when my mother-in-law was placed in a nursing home.
Suddenly the ordinary routines of life — the hours of quiet reading, evenings spent on the deck drinking in the night’s beauty, the long walks — were shattered.
My husband and I had to explore various nursing homes, meet with social workers, doctors and lawyers — and learn about the dizzying dimensions of dementia. Almost overnight, my poor mother-in-law went from independent and intelligent to bedridden and bewildered.
Like Bilbo, we had been clinging to a rigid routine and a cherished schedule. And when the doorbell rang and our life seemed to fall apart before our eyes, we reacted like Bilbo at first. He dug in his heels and refused to go on the journey, despite the dwarves’ insistence that he was needed.
But then one morning, he had a grace-filled change of heart. He decided to leave the comforts of home and go on the adventure. In doing so, he had to make many sacrifices along the way.
And so, like countless other people who find themselves suddenly in charge of another person’s life — whether it’s an elderly relative or a tiny child — we are following in this hobbit’s footsteps, journeying with trepidation down an unknown road. At first, we moaned and groaned, and shed tears, and protested, “We’re overwhelmed.”
But it was only through the prayers of friends and the grace of God that we finally got on with things. It isn’t the adventure we would have chosen, but it is the one handed to us. And so we will pick up the cross, as Bilbo did, and follow Christ.
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