I had a secret coming into Ireland that got me a good amount of banter from my friends in my Christian circles – I had never seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies or read the books. Shocking, I know! 😊 While in Ireland, I have watched two of the three movies. Right before Good Friday, I watched the second film “The Lord of The Rings: Two Towers”.  As I was watching what turned out to be a cinematic masterpiece of J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale, there was a quote at the end of the film from Frodo Baggins trusty friend Samwise that shook me to my core.

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

I find it very convenient that I found this scene right before Good Friday because I thought this quote described what Good Friday is. If you look at the story of Good Friday without knowing the ending, one could wonder how it was exactly good. But the death of our Saviour was indeed only the “darkness that must pass” and the new day came with the resurrection on Easter Sunday and the light of God did indeed shine all the clearer as Jesus made a way to have an eternal relationship with our Father. This quote also made me really reflect on my own story in Ireland and beyond. If you watch the movie, you see that Frodo and Samwise went on quite a journey to reach the point where Samwise made this statement.

There have been times of joy and there have been hardships, but they didn’t last and when they ended, the light shined all the more. God took what was meant for evil and turned it for good. There have been times I wanted to quit, but kept going because I was holding on to the hope of Jesus that he wants to redeem this world and show his beauty across the world and through his church. That my friends, makes it worth fighting for.  As I reach the home stretch of my time in Ireland, I want to share the main lessons I have learned from the movie, this scene, and my time in Ireland:

1. Hold on to the hope of Jesus and rely on the Samwise’s, God has placed in your life to push you towards Him and to care for you and encourage you. Even as a leader, sometimes the best thing that you can do is let others care for and serve you. We are not called to do our journey alone. We need Jesus and each other.
   
2. God will make a way through hardships, it may not be the way we expect, but He will always be faithful and keep His promises to His children and when the light does come, it will shine brighter than ever before through the darkness no matter how bad things get. No broken circumstance, even when it seems impossible to be redeemed, is not beyond God’s ability to not only heal it, but completely redeem it and make it new.
   
3. The stories of hardships and brokenness in our lives can often be the very story that God uses to reach people around us!

Theme image by Marco Ianna from Pixabay