Finding God in The Hobbit by Ware Jim

Author:Ware, Jim.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781414329840
Publisher: Tyndale House (eBook)
Published: 2012-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

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REFLECTION

True leaders endure their lot for the sake of others.

A FORTUNATE MISTAKE

So you see Bilbo had come in the end by the only road that was any good.

—THE HOBBIT, CHAPTER 10,

“A WARM WELCOME”

“Don’t leave the path!”

Those were Gandalf’s final instructions, the very last (and apparently the most important) words he had spoken to Bilbo and the dwarves before wheeling his horse around and riding away to attend to pressing business elsewhere.

Bilbo, worn out, wet through, and slightly seasick atop the bobbing barrel raft, sighed with remorse. Wouldn’t you know it would turn out this way? he thought. He shut his eyes and pictured the wizard galloping off into the west. “Whatever you do,” he had shouted back at them as they stepped into the shadows of the forest, “don’t leave the path.” Yet that was exactly what they had gone and done.

Not maliciously, of course. Not out of any wish to be rebellious or refractory. It wasn’t even a case of lapsed memory: Never once had they been unmindful of the terrors that haunted the trackless wastes of Mirkwood. Still, their decision had been conscious and willful. It was a question of sheer necessity. In the end, hunger and the hope of finding a meal had enticed them off the road and driven them into the wood.

The misfortunes they’d suffered since that moment were proof enough of their folly. Darkness, spiders, and venom. Sickness, despair, and captivity. Even now, Bilbo couldn’t help wondering whether any of the dwarves had actually survived their escape from the elf-king’s dungeons. Probably all drowned in those leaky barrels by now.

“Don’t I know it!”

Bilbo looked up at the sound of a voice. It came from one of the elves who stood along the bank, poling the mass of barrels downriver.

“Never any letup in the river traffic nowadays,” the elf was saying. “And the Lake-men expect us to maintain the banks and towpaths!”

“That’s right,” rejoined one of his companions. “Let the raftsmen of Mirkwood do it! But I remember a time when things were quite different.”

“Before the rise of the Shadow in the South,” said another. “Before the rains and the floods and the swelling of the marshes in the East. Before the path was washed out.”

Path washed out? Bilbo pricked up his ears.

“No more caravan travel along that route,” agreed the second elf. “But business is business, and the trade must go on. So it’s all up to us.”

The hobbit couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Had Gandalf really been unaware of all this? “Stick to the path!” he had told them—apparently in dead earnest. Beorn had said the same thing. But if these raftsmen were right, that road would have led them all to a watery dead end!

The sun was high now, glittering on the surface of the water. Away to the east a cloud-covered peak shimmered like a dim and distant vision above the red-gold horizon—the Lonely Mountain! Bilbo shaded his eyes against the glare.

“Off with you, then, my bouncing barrels!” shouted the first elf, giving the raft a great shove with his pole.

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