The Reformed Doctrine of Being Samwise Gamgee

There is comfort in the Christian faith when things go awry. That comfort is the fact that our lives are but the story of our Creator’s telling long ago. We need this comfort in hard times. One of my heroes, Samwise Gamgee of Bagshot Row, speaks to this well in The Two Towers:

I used to think that [adventures] were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them.

Those who are called to adventures often wish it was otherwise and long for quieter times. Samwise ever wanted to experience the stories of old; yet, looking to the end of his and Frodo’s great errand, he says:

And then we can have some…plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning’s work in the garden. I’m afraid that’s all I’m hoping for all the time.

Therefore, if we are in quiet times, let us enjoy them. And if we are in difficult times, let us trust our Maker’s storytelling to bring us through. All who belong to him through Christ will share in that profound rest in due time.