The Shadow is a Small and Passing Thing
In Return of the King, the last book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sam and Frodo are in the final stage of their journey: Crossing Mordor to Mount Doom. The heavy hand of darkness seemed to clamp over them from the pure weight of their griefs and fears. They had little hope yet of completing their task and even smaller hope of escaping to their former lives if this nightmare ever ended.
Walking with those two through the thickest darkness they had traveled of all, I found a companion in my pain. One evening, while Frodo slept and Sam watched, Sam looked up at a single star in the sky above Mordor. Thinking on that star, Tolkien wrote, “the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
Sam then laid down next to Frodo and slept peacefully.
The journey did not get any easier for Sam. He watched his friend suffer, they were nearly overtaken by orcs and Sméagol . It did not get easier because he found faith again. But he pressed forward with a bit more stamina, because hope and beauty strengthened his feet. He remembered that his world was worth fighting for, that his world was too beautiful to leave for the dark and twisted hand of Sauron utterly pulverize. He pressed on, even when it meant carrying Frodo on his own weary back.
G. K. Chesterton wrote about the pessimist and the optimist in his book Orthodoxy. He said that both outlooks on life were lacking, because the optimist wanted to cover up the flaws of this world and accept it as it was, while the pessimist wanted to be done with this world because it was beyond repair. He said we have to love this world enough to see it changed, and that is how we keep pressing forward. He wrote,
We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? (p. 101)
As my own heart feels like it’s in the vice grip of darkness, I find hope in Tolkien’s words. This Shadow, despite how long and deep it seems to be right now, is really a small and passing thing. I know there’s light beyond it. Not just in this life (because I know the darkness usually fades and grows less heavy with time) but also in the New Heavens and Earth. As the Apostle Paul wrote,
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed … So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:7–9, 16–18 ESV)
To God, this Shadow is but a dust cloud, and with a wave of his hand, he will blow it away forever and one day draw me into eternal life—where he is the eternal light, and darkness has finally been banished forever. Until then, we press on with weak hands and aching feet, because God made this world good, and there’s still beauty worth fighting for despite its fallenness.
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