A Cage

JR Vassar:

Confession: I love Lord of the Rings. I have read the books, and seen the movies too many times to count. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Seattle, WA in December of 2003 reading the last installment, Return of the King. I had just spent the previous few days in New York City at the invitation of a friend, considering whether or not God might be calling us to begin a church there. I left there convinced that I would never move to New York. To be honest, there was a lot of fear in my heart about the city. It was overwhelmingly large, seemed like a challenging place to raise a family, and was not known to be a place where a new church could become a sustained presence that blessed the city. My lack of interest in the city was more about those personal fears than about the city itself. So, we found ourselves in Seattle considering if that city might be the place God would have us move to begin a work. As I was reading Tolkien, I came to a dialogue between Aragorn and Eowyn (daughter of the King of Rohan). The Lady Eowyn is pleading to join Aragorn on a dangerous journey when she says these amazing words:

"I fear neither death nor pain."
"What do you fear, my Lady?"
"A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire."

I don't know what you feel when you read those words, but at that moment in that hotel room in Seattle, I felt like God was speaking something like this to me: "The longer you play it safe and avoid risk and potential loss, the more you will accept the present and lose your capacity to dream about and shape the future. When your fears are given more authority than the Spirit of God, all chance of valor and generational impact is gone." I remember journaling that morning and resolving not to make decisions based on sensitivity and submission to my fears, but on sensitivity and submission to the Spirit. 

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