You Have Learned Your Driving In A Hard School

"But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school." C.S. Lewis. My brother Dallas just got me the Lord of the Rings in 4K as an early birthday present and we were watching the first one this weekend. For a lot of people, Sam ends up being their favorite character for a lot of good reasons - he's irrepressibly cheerful, unfailingly loyal, always doing his best to share the load. But I've always admired Frodo. He never wanted the burden to come to him. He selflessly offers to surrender the ring to Gandalf and Galadriel, but when they are unable or unwilling to relieve him of this burden, he squares his shoulders and presses on. Day in and day out, mile after mile, under mountains and through forests and across marshes, he bears the burden of the Ring, he resists again and again and again the temptation to surrender to its power. This would be an impressive feat in and of itself but early on in his journey he is pierced by a Morgul blade. We don't need to get lost in the weeds explaining the history and significance of Morgul blades, but basically you can imagine that essentially Frodo had been given a vial of heroin to drop off at Mount Doom and the ringwraiths injected him with a bunch of morphine. The One Ring is already the most corrupting influence imaginable, but when Frodo got stabbed with a magic blade, it should have stripped him of any natural defenses. But somehow Frodo resists the evil lies of the Ring, even when he has been wounded and weakened and made doubly susceptible to its influence. He does not give in and he does not give up on his quest. Losing loved ones, attacked by friends, led by enemies, stung and almost devoured by a giant spider, tortured by orcs, driven almost to death by thirst and starvation, eventually blinded by his obsession with his battle against the Ring, and yet, and yet he still makes it to Mount Doom. Yes, Sam had to carry him up the last few hundred yards and yes, he ultimately gave in to the corrupting influence of the ring and could not bring himself to cast it into the fire, but he did not ultimately fail in his quest. He set out to carry the ring to Mount Doom and to see the ring destroyed, and he did in fact carry the Ring to Mount Doom and the ring was in fact destroyed. Some of us are given a hard journey. Some of us are given a hard journey and then have some debilitating weakness thrust upon us that should make our hard journey all but impossible. We should give up. It would be the rational thing to do. No one would blame us for it. In fact, they'd be amazed we made it as far as we did. But we don't give up. We don't give in. We press on. We keep going. We keep surviving day by day and hour by hour and minute by minute. Our journey will demand everything of us. It will use us up and will require still more. And maybe, like Frodo, we fail to achieve our quest on our own. We prove insufficient to the demands placed upon us. But maybe, like Frodo, we have those that love us and those that hate us strategically positioned to carry out the quest we have given everything to. Maybe it is enough that we got the ring to the right place at the right time for it to be destroyed, even if we were unable to cast it into the fire ourselves. Not even the very wise can see all ends. We may not be able to recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass, we may be naked in the dark with no veil between us and the all consuming burden we've been called to bear. But we are not alone. Like Sam, there is One who in His infinite wisdom cannot take away the cup from which we must drink, nor carry for us the burdens we must carry, but He can carry us. He knows our struggle. He has felt it in His bones and the depth of His soul. He knows what it is like to want to give up and He knows what it is like to stumble on when giving up is not an option. When our life is erupting in chaos and we are about to be consumed, He is ready to snatch us up on the wings of eagles and carry us to safety. We need be neither concerned nor ashamed if our path through life looks a little messier than other people's. I quote again, "He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school." C.S. Lewis. If we've been given a bad car to drive down a bumpy road, it does not mean we are a bad driver or any less worthy of the trip if our car breaks down all the time. And if our car breaks down then we run. And to quote Firefly "when you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl, when you can't do that... You find someone to carry you." I know some of us have it bad. Real bad. I know it looks like there's no way out, no way through, no way on earth, no chance in hell, no hope in heaven. I know our quest seems doomed from the start and our chances of success made even more unlikely by our constant string of failures. And I know we all want some snap of the fingers, some motivational quote, some pill or paycheck or change of heart to magically make it all better. It would be so nice and it would feel so good to check off once and for all from our journey all despair and heartache and misery and doubt and confusion and fear. It will get better. And then it will get worse again. And it will get stranger and more complicated and more frightening. And then it will get better again. And maybe it will get worse again and this time it seems like the end for sure, but then it will get better again. And if our burden gets so heavy that we're down to one step per day or even one step per month, all that we are proving is that somehow, beyond all hope or reason, we are still strong enough to carry our burden another step. All will be made right in the end. It will all have been worth it, strange and impossible as that may seem right now.