Joyful Ruins

“Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them.” – Tolkien

This sounds awfully like the Bible, does it not?

• Do not worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Matthew 6:34.
• I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. Isaiah 45:2
• I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:19
• A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way? Proverbs 20:24
• Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:21

This is just a taste of what God’s word promises us on perilous journeys where are hearts are troubled and we can’t see the path before us.

This world is filled with such uncertainty, and the path before us is often unclear. When life seems to be going smoothly, we imagine we know what is up ahead. We lay out a 5 year plan and assume it will come to be. We know we will get that job or that partner or move to that place. Then, something shakes things up in our life and we find ourselves on an unfamiliar path. Sometimes the path is dangerous and troubling, sometimes just confusing or bewildering, and sometimes all together delightful! But, the unfamiliar path reminds us we do not know what tomorrow holds. This, is a troubling thought indeed. This, is a truth and reality that we will probably wrestle with all our lives. However, there are greater truths that can bring peace on the unfamiliar path.

Galadriel tells the fellowship in this part of the Lord of the Rings that perhaps, there is already a path before them they cannot see. She tells them to rest their worried and troubled hearts because their destiny may just be laid out before them.

Though Lord of the Rings is fantasy, it points to a bigger truth. Those who follow Christ have promise after promise that our path is laid before us by the Good Father.

We do not have to wonder if God has gone before us. We do not have to wonder if this path is unfamiliar to our Christ. 1. He has walked the unfamiliar path before when He came to earth in the form of a child and lived a fully human life of suffering, hunger, and pain. And even He did not know the timing of everything. He chose to be limited in some ways in order to show us He understands and is close to us in our times of treading the unfamiliar path. AND 2. Christ guides us on the unfamiliar path, it is not unfamiliar to Him because darkness is as light to Him. We may find it dark. We may not be able to see even one step before us. Perhaps our hearts are so tired and worried, we can’t even see the next minute of the day, but He can and He’s there. He is before us in every minute, every step and He has provision for us.

Do not worry about the next step. I know that is easier said than practiced. I do a terrible job of it. I constantly wonder, what is next Lord? Surely He must show me what to do, where to go. Where is this troubling path leading? But no amount of questioning and worrying will lead us to the answers. All it will do is lead us to more pain and darkness.

We do not know what the path holds before us but we can certainly choose to trust in the One who holds the path before us, who made the path before us. We can repeatedly tell our souls the promises He has given us about that path, about Himself.

So, right now, do not trouble your weary hearts over what may come, rest in the absolute truth that their is a path laid out before you by the One who has walked the most unfamiliar painful path and left it in victory and splendor!