In October, Amazon published my first book: “Holding Our Breath, 25 Advent Readings, Volume 1.” “HOB” has sold over 200 copies.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 – 1973) wrote “The Hobbit.” How many sold? Answer: over 100 million (an outdated 2012 number!). Translated into fifty languages, these versions of “The Hobbit” include two of Tolkien’s favorite vernaculars, Icelandic and West Frisian. Imagine!
The challenges of life
This literary phenomenon nearly never happened. Tolkien and his friend/fellow author/professor, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), both fought in WW1.
Lewis’ step-son recalls hearing his father cry out at night – suffering from PTSD. Tolkien also suffered PTSD.
In a play about Tolkien, playwright Reed presents a possible conversation between Tolkien and his wife, Edith (1916-1971):
“EDITH: You’re stuck, and every (school) term you get stuck-er. Ever since you came back from the war—
TOLKIEN: You didn’t suppose I would thrive! My friends all buried in France?
EDITH: It’s ten years now, Ronald, and there’s less of you every year. I don’t think I can stand another ten; there’ll be nothing left. Why must you always hide out in your study?!” (Ron Reed, Draft Nine, post-Production Draft: June, 2018).
What/Who moved Tolkien to write?
God’s provisions
August 28, 1930, C.S. Lewis sent a letter to childhood friend, Arthur Greeves. “Some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves.”
Or, Paul penned Romans 11:29: “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.”
Still, Tolkien got stuck. He needed more than his own God-given ability.
Later, Tolkien and Lewis formed a group of writers called the Inklings. In that fellowship, they read their recent works to each other, catalyzing creativity.
Here is more dialogue from Reed’s play between Tolkien and Lewis when the Inklings had another name.
“TOLKIEN: We’ve got up a bit of a club, quite informal really. Weekly meetings in my study, Tuesdays. The Kolbitar.
LEWIS: Coal… Bittar?
TOLKIEN: “Coal biter.”
LEWIS: As in, chewing on…
TOLKIEN: On coal. The image is this: men in a vast Northern waste, gathered in some shelter, recounting ancient tales. Outside, snow and ice, perilous sea-cliffs plunging straight down into near-frozen waters. They draw close to the story-teller, close to the warmth of the fire. So close they appear to, well…
WARNIE (C.S. Lewis’ brother): To chew the coals.
TOLKIEN: Eating fire, taking it in. Stoking the deep places, the heart – linguistically, very close to hearth – where the embers of language burn red, spark the soul, kindle fire, flame into… Into what?
LEWIS: Literature, I suppose?
TOLKIEN: Yes! And something more.
LEWIS: Poetry.
TOLKIEN: Something beyond language” (Ibid.).
This fellowship stoked deep places of C. S. Lewis’ heart too. Lewis wrote more than 30 books. Translated into more than 30 languages, they have, as of 2016, sold over 200 million copies.
We thank God and these gifted authors for impacting our lives.
A necessary comparison
The book I wrote pales in comparison to their books.
But their books pale in comparison to another book, the most frequently bought book in the world, the Bible. God’s word describes in language what would otherwise be beyond language. It has far outsold any other book, with a whopping 3.9 billion copies sold over the last 50 years (1962-2012).
Friend, will you read the Bible in 2021?
Hearing the authors of the Bible
Many Bible authors wrote because of the “fire” in their bones. Jeremiah 23:29: “’Is not My word like fire,’ declares the LORD?”
David – Psalm 39:3: “My heart grew hot within me; as I mused, the fire burned.”
Jeremiah – 20:9: “There is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”
These authors always wrote by the Spirit of God. 2 Peter 1:21: “No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were ‘carried along’ by the Holy Spirit.” Remarkably, “carried along” also describes the Spirit’s ingenious work in creation. (Genesis 1:2)
God called Paul to be an instrument to carry His name. As we read Paul’s God-besotted thirteen letters, he refers to God by various names 1550 times!
Even when local authorities in Jerusalem forbade Peter and John to speak publicly, they replied: Acts 4:20: “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
Why?
The Spirit drove them to articulate in words we have treasured for centuries what was completely new.
About the Apostles, Charles Williams, another Inkling, wrote: “They had not the language; they had not the ideas; they had to discover everything. They had only one fact, and that was that “it had happened.” Messias had come, and been killed, and risen; and they had been dead “in trespasses and sin,” and now they were ‘not’” (“Descent of the Dove”).
The origin of The Fire
Galatians 4:6: “God has ‘sent’ the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.”
The Greek word translated “sent” gives us “apostle.” “Apostles” are “sent ones.” As an Apostle, Paul knew what it was to be dispatched.
But, in Galatians 4:6, when Paul writes about God sending his Spirit to Jesus’ followers, he intensifies “apostello” by adding a power prefix, “ek.” The Spirit expends “extra-sending-power” to “make new” hearts hardened by depression, pride, clutter, deception, prejudice – beguiling the hearts of those he changes. Aha!
That Fire and Christmas
Friend, now pay attention! Paul also uses “ekapostello” to describe sending Jesus into our world. Aha, extra-sending-Advent-power! To come to us in Bethlehem, what hurdles Jesus joyfully leapt: conception, the womb, the birth canal/afterbirth, our cruel world and more.
Gal 4:4 “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth (ek-apostello) his Son, born of a woman…so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6Because you are sons, God has sent (ek-apostello) the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
Friend, may God’s Spirit/Fire reach you and warm your heart this Christmas season.
Note: Another quote from Charles Williams perplexed me as a college student: “The beginning of Christendom is, strictly, at a point out of time. A metaphysical trigonometry finds it…at the meeting of two heavenward lines, one drawn from Bethany along the Ascent of Messias, the other from Jerusalem against the Descent of the Paraclete. That measurement (is) the measurement of eternity in operation, of the bright cloud and the rushing wind” (“The Descent of the Dove”). Williams could have enlarged his trigonometry beginning with the Descent of Messiah into Nazareth/Bethlehem.
