THOUGH SATAN SHALL BUFFET
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
THOUGH SATAN SHALL BUFFET
by Adam Carroll Draper
In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, there is a part where the nine walkers are lost in the mines of Moria. (The depiction of this scene in the movie was very close to the way I had imagined it as a kid, so I liked it). They have stopped so that Gandalf can get his bearings, when Frodo notices that Gollum is following them. Frodo says that it is a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum when he had the chance, but Gandalf chides him not to be so quick to pass out judgment because Gollum might still have a part to play yet.
Frodo then expresses a sentiment a lot of us can relate to presently. “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.” Gandalf responds. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”
Today it feels like we are all those “who live to see such times.” A friend told me the other day that he was struggling for a reason to keep plunking away at work. I think he felt a kinship with the band that continued to play on the Titanic as it went down, but there may be something wonderful in that analogy. Remember how those band members decided to keep playing? The conductor had dismissed the band and had bidden them farewell. As they were all making ready to depart, he raised his violin and began playing Nearer My God to Thee in a dulcet sweetness drawn from some ethereal realm, as only a violin can. The remaining members halted their departure and returned to play into eternity as they descended in the great ship’s groaning demise. Whether fool-hearty or fated, the band played on. That moment remains in our collective memory, beckoning us to something ineffable.
Having turned to consider eternity and how our fleeting moment might play in that song, it strikes me as oddly prescient to recall that the Chinese consider it an ancient curse to bid another, “May you live in interesting times.” Something down in the marrow of my Western bones wants to add (in my best Brutus), “On such a full sea are we now afloat.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost ten trillion dollars.
My friend was not disconsolate when he told me that he was struggling the other day. He was numb, suffering the poisoned voice of the accuser, ever whispering on the stale breath of pointlessness. He was convinced that the global financial system was imploding, taking everyone’s accounts and investments down with the fictitious currency upon which it was built. He was exhausted and aghast. It was as if the wind of a mystical charade had rent the curtain of reality and laid bare a horrible new now in which he was bereft of everything he had so long struggled to gain; and here he stood, agape at the stark moment that the full burdens of his youth were yet again upon his aged back to struggle into his eighties before he could collapse under the weight of owning nothing, leaving but an inheritance of indenture to his children.
I will say here to everyone what I said to my friend: “We don’t know what this means or what will be!” What we do know is that we have right now to be good to each other. There are plenty of people who need me right now. I will help them - not because it fits into my vision of an end to this tortured servitude to banks and funds and Mammon, but because I am alive in this moment for a reason, to glorify my Father and to trust him!
I keep hearing Gandalf saying, “There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil.”
I read the last chapter of The Book. The end is not in doubt, children of the Most High. Come on! Now is not the time to be crestfallen. We don’t know when that Eastern sky is going to part, but it is. Forgive me for mixing a biblical exhortation with the words of a fictitious wizard here, but it is true that “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
We can’t give up now, in the very moment that it matters. Don’t be disheartened. The darkest hour is just before dawn. We must shine faith in our God now. We express that here by remembering what the Lord taught us, “Insomuch as ye have done it unto these least of my brethren, ye have done it to me.” We have the honor of shining his glory to each other in this present darkness! What if the glory cloud is gathering? What if that occasion somehow echoes in depths of our trust and resolution to be his splendid bride at this moment?
And Lord haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The sky be rolled back as a scroll.
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend,
Even so it is well with my soul.
If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment and/or share it. It helps. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to read it.