And yet - Christmas Edition
Sorry I forgot to post yesterday ya'll we were having so much fun around here that posting didn't even cross my mind until sometime in the middle of the night.
So my mom has this tradition that she started after all of the Lord of the Rings movies came out that every Christmas Eve she watches all the Lord of the Rings movies. Well the movies play all day but she doesn't sit in front of the TV all day. But she watches more than the rest of us because we sort of wander in and out watching bits and pieces here and there.
The stories told within this trilogy lead to a grand moment of eucatastrohpe. Which makes sense because their creator coined the term. I know I have shared about eucatastrophe before but I believe it is worth talking about often. Eucatastrophe is when a situation that has come to the point when all hope is lost suddenly and unexpectedly has a turn around right into a happy ending.
It's like this - the living members of the fellowship of the ring minus Sam and Frodo are surrounded on all sides by a army 100 times the size of the one they came with. They have been told that Frodo is already death and are given proof of the statement but they know they must fight against the darkness even though all hope of winning is lost. When it comes to Sam and Frodo - Frodo has just given into the temptation of the ring and it seems that evil has overtaken the one who set out to save the land from the darkness. And yet in an odd twist of fate Gollum shows up wanting the ring for himself and in the fight for it falls with the ring into the lava of the mountain - the only thing that can destroy the ring. Because of a fight and a mistake everything the characters know and love is saved thrust back into the light exploding the darkness around it.
J.R.R Tolkien may have written this but he did not consider this the greatest eucatastrope instead he considered an actually historical event the ultimate eucatastrophe.
Think of this - Human beings find that they have this part inside of them that cannot be filled or satisfied by anything they try to fill it with and they have effectively cut themselves off from the one who can fill it. There is nothing they can do to get to that being - hopeless.
And yet - gosh I love that - AND YET...
(I'll let this dude from my mom's favorite scene in her favorite Christmas movie say the rest.)
Now humor me - Israel at the time (and still to this day) was in a state of turmoil. At the time they were under the Rome rule and it was bleak to say the least. It was easy at the time to think that a savior would be someone who would come with loud blast and a fearsome army to save them from the oppression that they were living under. But instead we all got a baby.
Instead of an overthrowing of a current political situation we got a personal and relational God who came for all of us. And gosh I would so much rather have that and I am so grateful for that.
Because this all led to what J.R.R. Tolkien believed was the greatest eucatastrophe in history because it is true and I agree -
That God would come down with the purpose to restore us to him because of his great love for us.
And yet - "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
Merry Christmas!
So my mom has this tradition that she started after all of the Lord of the Rings movies came out that every Christmas Eve she watches all the Lord of the Rings movies. Well the movies play all day but she doesn't sit in front of the TV all day. But she watches more than the rest of us because we sort of wander in and out watching bits and pieces here and there.
The stories told within this trilogy lead to a grand moment of eucatastrohpe. Which makes sense because their creator coined the term. I know I have shared about eucatastrophe before but I believe it is worth talking about often. Eucatastrophe is when a situation that has come to the point when all hope is lost suddenly and unexpectedly has a turn around right into a happy ending.
It's like this - the living members of the fellowship of the ring minus Sam and Frodo are surrounded on all sides by a army 100 times the size of the one they came with. They have been told that Frodo is already death and are given proof of the statement but they know they must fight against the darkness even though all hope of winning is lost. When it comes to Sam and Frodo - Frodo has just given into the temptation of the ring and it seems that evil has overtaken the one who set out to save the land from the darkness. And yet in an odd twist of fate Gollum shows up wanting the ring for himself and in the fight for it falls with the ring into the lava of the mountain - the only thing that can destroy the ring. Because of a fight and a mistake everything the characters know and love is saved thrust back into the light exploding the darkness around it.
J.R.R Tolkien may have written this but he did not consider this the greatest eucatastrope instead he considered an actually historical event the ultimate eucatastrophe.
Think of this - Human beings find that they have this part inside of them that cannot be filled or satisfied by anything they try to fill it with and they have effectively cut themselves off from the one who can fill it. There is nothing they can do to get to that being - hopeless.
And yet - gosh I love that - AND YET...
(I'll let this dude from my mom's favorite scene in her favorite Christmas movie say the rest.)
Now humor me - Israel at the time (and still to this day) was in a state of turmoil. At the time they were under the Rome rule and it was bleak to say the least. It was easy at the time to think that a savior would be someone who would come with loud blast and a fearsome army to save them from the oppression that they were living under. But instead we all got a baby.
Instead of an overthrowing of a current political situation we got a personal and relational God who came for all of us. And gosh I would so much rather have that and I am so grateful for that.
Because this all led to what J.R.R. Tolkien believed was the greatest eucatastrophe in history because it is true and I agree -
That God would come down with the purpose to restore us to him because of his great love for us.
And yet - "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
Merry Christmas!
Comments
Post a Comment