There’s a pivotal moment of despair in the well loved story of The Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf, the great grey wizard, has fallen into the Deep after facing the Balrog, a formidable foe from the underworld. Fallen to his death, as far as the fellowship knows. The great sage…now gone forever.
Darkness sweeps in and floods out all hope, and the fellowship is broken. All is lost, as it would seem.
But hope is never really lost. Not completely.
When Gandalf is restored to the fellowship, there is great joy. Our friend has returned! But he is no longer the grey and grizzled wizard of old. He is now Gandalf the White, who has been “sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done.” He has fallen through death and darkness to return to the land of the living in order to give hope and strength to a world in peril.
Peter and the other disciples must have felt a similar kind of agony as they watched the soldiers nail their teacher and friend to the cross. Jesus, the one they had come to believe was the Messiah, the hope of mankind, was now dead. They had given up 3 years of their lives to follow this man, and now he was gone.
Or so it seemed.
The fictional character of Gandalf paints a stunning picture of the risen Christ. Jesus was crucified, his fellowship scattered. We don’t know all the things he did while his physical body lay in the tomb. 1 Peter 3:19 says he “preached unto the spirits in prison”, and so we get the sense that he was indeed busy during the two days before his resurrection. He was on the move.
On the third day he was restored to his physical body and walked out of the tomb to rejoin the mourning saints who were in desperate need of hope.
Hope is not lost.
If there was ever a time for us to cling to this truth it most certainly is right now.
Friends, we are a world at war. I don’t have to tell you that. You feel it in your soul. Our world is not as it was even just a few years ago. Things are changing at rapid speed, and certainly not in a good way.
But even in this time of present darkness, I believe we can find hope.
Early in CS Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, we are introduced to the stunning world of Narnia. Little Lucy enters this strange new place through a wardrobe and through her eyes we find a world under siege. The dreadful ice queen has imprisioned the land in everlasting winter. All is not as it should be.
But the great lion Aslan is on the move. He is building an army that waits in anticipation for the sons and daughters of Adam. Hope is rising on the horizon.
Lewis’ wonderful tale of Aslan and Narnia is a near representation of our own world. We are a world at war, and our enemy has been busy.
But Jesus is on the move.
The divine plan, cultivated before the creation of the world, is at the peak of culmination. Jesus, our risen Lord, has been busy.
But busy doing what?
“And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” John 14:3
There is a great plan for our restoration, for the redemption of all creation. This world is a pale shadow of what it was created to be. Eden has been lost. Mankind has fallen under a curse. And Jesus, the Creator of all things, has taken it upon himself to restore the union between God and man. That union was lost in the garden, but through the atoning blood of Christ, peace has been restored between the Creator and his creation.
But the work is not finished. This world is still under assault. Satan, our great enemy, is working hard to keep the world in darkness. Just as the Ice Queen Jardis holds on to her dominion over Narnia with malice, so does our enemy. But his time is short.
Jesus will return, and when he does this world will be as it was meant to be.
Our culture tends to put all its hope in things that the bible says will one day perish. We rally around our favorite sports teams, our favorite celebrity or polarize ourselves over politics. We long for something to lose ourselves in, clinging to the things we think give us relief, even if it’s momentary. But these things leave us unsatisfied in the end. Why is that?
We were created for something more. We can feel the assault on creation in our very core. We can see it daily when we turn on the news. We are not okay, and no matter how many things we try to distract ourselves with, deep down we know the truth.
We are fatigued by the winter of our souls.
We also long for the return of our King. His return will establish order and peace on this ravished world, and we long for it. Our souls cry out for Eden to be restored.
“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they done.” Revelation 22:12
Are we ready for him?
Jesus is on the move.
Sean David Ealy 