“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?” 1
The answer to the question from the opening quote is, of course, a resounding yes! Everything sad will come untrue. That’s not being delusional nor is it wishful thinking and it’s also not downplaying how sad, difficult and painful the circumstances can (or have) become. In the question lies an acknowledgment that things are truly awful at the moment but in it also lies seeds of hope. Why hope?
True hope – if there’s such a thing – isn’t based on lies or on willful ignorance of reality. It’s a hope which, like light, has the power to pierce through tangible darkness. It’s one that believes that, just as it was for our Lord, life springs forth after death. “Therefore,” writes the Apostle Paul, “we do not lose heart.”2 He’s well aware that, a minute ago, he had just written of how he was “so utterly burdened beyond his strength that he despaired of life itself,”3 nor does he feign ignorance of the fact that he’s “wasting away outwardly.”4 He instead looks straight into what feels like the abyss and calls it “a light and momentary affliction.”5
The pain, toil, difficulty and sadness; all of that is real. Every tear that will be wiped away will have fallen first. The healing will be brought to those who had real wounds and comfort will be ministered to those who first mourned and groaned. Death, the darkest of evils, will be “swallowed up in victory,”6 but it’ll be after it was allowed to unleash untold carnage. Nevertheless, Christian hope is much greater; it proclaims not only the defeat, but also the undoing of evil. For Paul, we’re to smile – and even rejoice7 – in the face of it and perceive it only as a preparation for “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”8
“[Some mortals] say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” 9
C. S. Lewis
Why then should your soul be downcast, asks the psalmist? Why should it be disquieted within you?10 May not despair cause you to hitch your wagon to the train of evil thereby tying yourself to its fate. Be hopeful in Christ instead; hopeful enough to “purify yourself as He is pure.”11 Suffer and grieve, but “not as those who have no hope”12 for the time is coming when “night will be no more.”13 Moreover, Christ, our “hope of glory”14 is not far from you; He’s not waiting at the end of the tunnel because He walks with you even now, even through the valley of the shadow of death15.
Hope then, brethren, “for thus is it spoken: Oft hope is born, when all is forlorn.”16 Dare to hope, because everything sad will come untrue!
Samwise Gamgee to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, one of the most moving sentences. Book Six, Chapter 4: “The Field of Cormallen”, Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien ↩︎
2 Corinthians 4:16 ↩︎
2 Corinthians 1:8 ↩︎
2 Corinthians 4:16 ↩︎
2 Corinthians 4:17 ↩︎
1 Corinthians 15:54 ↩︎
Romans 5:3 ↩︎
2 Corinthians 4:17 ↩︎
The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis, Chapter 9 ↩︎
Psalm 42:5 ↩︎
1 John 3:3 ↩︎
1 Thessalonians 4:13 ↩︎
Revelations 22:5 ↩︎
Colossians 1:27 ↩︎
Psalm 23:4 ↩︎
Legolas to Gimli in The Lord of the Rings, Book Five, Chapter 9: “The Last Debate”, Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien ↩︎
