Maybe you’re facing some ugly circumstances in life? That’s how the adventure of life sometimes goes. Tolkien’s, Frodo and Sam dialogue near the end of The Two Towers:
‘I don’t like anything here at all,’ said Frodo, ‘step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But our path is laid.’
‘Yes, that’s so,’ said Sam. ‘And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it is often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.
No turning back. There will be “Orcs.” We must persevere.
“for the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.(Pr 24:16).”
This is very providential. I can’t even count how many times I’ve secretly thought, “I didn’t sign up for this.” or “Why should I put up with this?”
Proverbs 24:10 says, “If you falter in times of trouble how small is your strength.” Indeed, to trouble we have been called! How many of us abandon our “calling” because of a temporal discomfort?
Wouldn’t our outlook be so different if we looked at our personal hardships (whether private or public) as the very thing that God has “called” us TO rather than something to run away FROM?
The unexpected “Orcs” are part of the process. And, even if we lose every battle from now until death – we STILL have the Victory because of Jesus!