Losing It

I’ve been watching the Lord of the Rings films again.  I pretty much mentally read through the entire Bible through these stories.  Oh, if we’d just let Jesus have His voice, the places we’d find Him; they’re endless.  But that’s another topic for another day.  So I’m watching The Two Towers and I come across the scene when the Ents (giant talking trees for the LOTR illiterate) are gathering to decide whether or not they will join in the war to save mankind.  Like the characters Merry and Pippen, I too grow anxious awaiting their response.  As TreeBeard slowly gasps and trudges out one long word at a time, I want to scream at the television, “Hurry up!  People are dying!  Hurry uuuuup!”

Then I’m quieted by Treebeard’s wisdom.  He disarms my frustration with a few elderly insights.  He is right in many ways.  He is sensible and experienced.  There are perspectives he has to share with these younger lads, and they do well to heed these truths.  For a moment, I admire Treebeard and feel he is justified for taking his time.  Good, wise Treebeard.  His heart is in the right place.  Maybe we’re supposed to be more like him.

But my admiration is quickly refueled into fury when the very wisdom and truth Treebeard has shared become his excuse for not helping others in need.  It’s not his war to fight.  These humans have brought this trouble on themselves.  The Trees are peaceable and pious and if the humans want to go ahead and kill each other, then let them.  The Trees will enjoy their peace and watch the world go to ruin.

I watch and my heart begins to hum verses about Trees of Righteousness, planted as oaks, the people of God.  These Ents believe they can watch the world go to ruin and still enjoy their peace, because it’s not their problem.  Except that it is their problem.  Unknowingly, many of their own have already fallen prey to this shadow of darkness.  Finally, after seeing their own lost and destroyed, they join in the fight.  Now it matters, because it’s affecting them.

But what about when it didn’t?

I recall another individual who could have laid back in comfort and watched the world go to ruin.  He watched a woman and a man take a piece of fruit, eat it, and slowly begin to die.  He could have said, “Not my problem.”  He could have mocked, “You got yourself into this mess.  You get yourself out.”  But there was no mockery and there was no hiding away in safety.  

There was searching through a garden and calling out, “Where are you?”  

There was stepping into the chaos and making a way to start over again.

There was the sending of a Son, who wasn’t afraid to fight and to love.

God could have easily looked at the mess of man and laughed, “Sorry ‘boutcha.”  Instead, He proved His love for us, in that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Love compelled Christ to abandon His comfort and join in our fight.

When we can be satisfied to stay hidden in the forest with the other Christian trees and watch the world go to ruin, we have become nothing like Jesus.  If, in fact, we can enjoy our snow-globe sanctuaries where only the saints can sit and the people are perfect, Jesus might not really want to hang out with us anymore.  

“Away from Me," Jesus said, "because I was in prison, and you did not come to Me.  

I was naked and you did not clothe Me.  I was hungry and you did not feed Me.  

As much as you did not do it for the least of these, you did not do it for Me.” 

Do you see the fate of these kinds of “trees”?  They are away from Jesus.  Far, far away from Him.  These are people who thought they were doing it right, they just weren’t living like Christ.  How sad for them.  How sad for their world.  

I know, you have your own problems.  So do I.  So did Jesus.  But if we wait for all of our questions to be answered and our suffering relieved before we step out to fight for someone else, we’ll never make one single move.  Because some of these things, they’re just not going to resolve.  Some people aren’t going to change.  Some wounds will be a thorn in your flesh your entire life.  But you will never find a greater healing than giving what you need to someone else.   

Is there a unique way in which God is calling you to join Him in redeeming a broken world?  

If God were free to create new life through you, what might that look like?  

If your own wounds were no longer a reason you "can't..." what would you be doing with your time and energy?

"If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.  
But if you give up your life for My sake, you will find it."

(Matthew 16:25)