Jonny Heart: A Fool's Hope

Monday, July 16, 2007

A Fool's Hope

Lord of The Rings is a wonderful story. In fact I believe it to be one of the greatest fantasy books ever written (even though it is in the sci-fi section). Through out the story one of the characters, the great wizard Gandalf, calls a thoughtless hobbit named Pippin a fool. The poor idiotic hobbit doesn’t seem to do the wisest things and then Gandalf repeatedly calls him a fool. In the third installment, Return of the King, Pippin seeks refuge in his beloved leader Gandalf just before the great battle of the story. “Is there any hope?” and the wizard smiles and replies “only a fool's hope.”

The week that’s past I spent with family in a pleasant setting nestled in the Ozarks of Missouri. Much reminded me of my home away from home in Knoxville. This town had small rolling mountains for skyscrapers and small stores flooded with proud Yankees. Yes, this town has a name; it is Branson. I wondered for weeks leading up to our trip why we would waste our time in such a boring place and even now believe other trips we have ventured on seemed better. In the end I must confess that the week proved better then I had anticipated or imagined. While on the trip, we met as a family for church. During this small gathering we ventured on to the topic of what we hope for. My father led the discussion and asked us what we hope for. My cousins gave their answers that included graduation and marriage, all that jazz. When everyone’s eyes fell on me I threw out the simple answers; graduation, success in family, and eventually teach. I really wish for these hopes to pass yet I felt that those were not the most important answers to give.

In my last post I ventured into the realm of self-doubt. Self-doubt about whether or not ministry is my true calling in life. Last night I think God spoke through one of my friends to me. Several of my friends and I went to a field in the middle of nowhere. While gazing at the endless above I found myself wondering into a deep conversation with the same girl as in my previous post. This time around she helped me, and pointed something out to me. I disclosed the struggle in my head about my doubt. I told her of my fear that I may kill a church or be a horrible leader, and not be able to help people. I’ve seen all this done. I do not remember the exact words she said at that moment, for I have had a serious lack of sleep since then, but her words comforted me. She then also shared her greatest spiritual weakness with me. Later that early morning we talked about the marvel of God’s creation. She said she could look at a swarm of gnats and see the amazing knowledge and power of God. “Who else could have thought of something so small yet know its grave purpose.” I was amazed at how she could see God and his power in something so minute. That got me wondering. Is what I choose to do for an occupation going to change the course of God’s will? I think not. Whether I chose architecture or Vocational ministry Christ will return precisely when he means too. All I have to consider is, am I living as Christ would will me to live? Do my actions gratify God? I choose ministry not because God revealed himself to me in some burning bush but because this servant hood will help me to be the best man of God I could possibly be. I’m just along for the ride on what ever experiences God may, and will throw my way on such a choice.

I don’t really know for sure why Gandalf answered Pippin the way he did but I can only imagine that in the heart of a foolish and thoughtless hobbit also lies the will to be victorious in what may seem as, an impossible battle to win. I am a foolish and thoughtless human that never quite gets it, yet because of my hope I can stand firm in my decision to become a minister.

So now I thank you friend, thank you for your words and wisdom in realizing your place in the massive and wonderful creation of God. You may never know the weight that carried with last night’s conversation. Thank you. The next time a person asks me what some of my hopes are I can answer them with this; I hope and pray that God will give me experiences that will change my life into being more like my rabbi

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Quotes from my Senior Patron

-Clive Staples Lewis-

"The Love of knowledge is a kind of madness."

The Problem of Pain

"We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which he will not be satisfied until it has a certain character."

Mere Christianity - (Pg. 31)

"This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies."

The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis (Pg. 31)

"What would really satisfy us would be a God who said anything we happened to like doing, what does it matter so long as they are contented? We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, liked to see young people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all."

"If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the fit of faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 139-140)

"It is not reason that takes away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other... Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your ganging moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know by experience..."

A Grief Observed - (P.g. 9-10)

"I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 7)

"It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 32)

"In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth-only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 56-57)

"Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something mush harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person-and he would not need it."