A Golden Sunset

“I now go to my fathers…in whose Mighty Company…I shall no longer be ashamed.”

These are the last words spoken by Theoden, King of Rohan as he lies dying amidst the broken bodies strewn across the Pelannor Fields near the end of The Return of the King. Theoden is an unsure, incomplete man who has lived in the shadow of greater heroes his whole life, “the lesser son of greater sires”. He is a man who, for a time, allowed the derogatory lies and destructive counsel of his enemy to become the voice within his own head, as a result of which his belief faltered and his heart for battle and noble deeds was lost completely. But now, faced with “the great battle of his time”, Theoden becomes the man who responds with great valor, reclaiming his honor through mighty deeds “worthy of remembrance” - giving his very life on a distant battlefield far from home in the fight against the gathering Darkness that threatens to consume all the free peoples of Middle-Earth.

Thankfully, the verdict on King Theoden’s life was withheld until the very last, until his course was run and the last chapter of his life had been written. In the end, despite the dark years of his passage and the doubtfulness of his ultimate destination, it would be safe to assume that Theoden felt himself to have become at last the man that he always longed to be. The man he had dreamt of being as a child. The man he had knew he was meant to be. The man he had set out to become before life had thrown him off track. Doubtless the King of Rohan was fully aware that other forces besides himself had played a crucial role in the process of his “redemption”. Still, at the moment of each decision the choice to go on or to turn back was set before him, and he alone made the hard choices to follow the Road that healing, deliverance, and repentance had opened for him.

Even more thankfully, (for Theoden is a fictitious character and we are not) the verdict on our lives has been withheld for a time as well. While life and breath are granted to us, we yet have the same chance of making a good end to what may have been, until recently, a tragic tale of defeated dreams, repeated failures, squandered youth, broken promises and unfulfilled potential.

Yes – we have been offered the same chance.

But are we taking it?

Will we take it? Before time runs out?

How many of us have spoken our own verdict upon ourselves already, somewhere in the silent watches of the night as we sat alone with the history of our lives up until the present moment laid bare before our mind’s eye? In the Sacred Romance, John Eldredge and Brent Curtis offer the chilling warning that most people never rise above the verdict that they have passed upon themselves: “If ‘Failure’ is the part you’re playing, you will fail…the Nobodies will fade away…” For those of us with less than ‘heroic’ track records, (ourselves included, by the way) our expectations on how things are “bound to turn out, knowing our luck” can become a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. Walking in complete lack of faith in everything we claim to believe, we choose instead to resign ourselves to the belief that who we are going to be in the future is more determined by who we have been in the past than it is by God’s promise to make us like Jesus…and His power to make good on that promise.

I can remember a dark time in our late 20’s when David and I were standing on his parent’s porch, lamenting the direction-less nature of our lives, filling the quiet Midwestern night with nervous laughter over the joke that, based upon our accumulated heavenly rewards up until that point, we had every expectations of spending Eternity as homeless bums living in cardboard boxes and panhandling on the streets of Paradise. If our mortal lives had ended at that point, we knew full well that we would be gathered to our fathers, in whose mighty company…we were going to be totally ashamed.

The script we were unconsciously living from back then was: “we’re the guys who just barely make it into Heaven by the skin of their teeth”. Sharing that secret terror with each other and speaking it aloud ushered in the beginning of a desperate search for a changed life, for redemption from the forgettable years of squandered youth. But the self-perception that we were Heavenly Slackers was not easily shaken off. While our goals and hopes and dreams have been completely revolutionized, the insidious voice of the Accuser has remained unchanged: ‘So! Look at you. A Saint now, is it? What a laugh. One more wild dream, destined to fail like everything else you have ever done. Don’t be a hypocrite. Why don’t you let it go? Maybe tackle something more your speed. Something you can handle. Oh, that’s right – you can’t really handle anything very well, now can you?’

We must ask ourselves: is God’s power just great enough to save our souls, or is it strong enough to transform them? Can a past life of hesitation, passivity, wasted potential and cowardice be redeemed? Is the Great Task of our lives – the one that will truly define our role in this unfolding saga of God’s Invasion of the rebel planet and His Rescue of His beloved sons and daughters - yet before us? Is there still hope to turn this thing around and make a glorious end “worthy of remembrance”?

“…in whose mighty company I shall no longer be ashamed.”

They are all there, you know. Paul. The Twelve. King David. Saint Francis and Clare. St. Ingatius. St. Patrick. Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, McDonald. Elliot, Saint, McCully. Oswald Chambers. A.W. Tozer. Keith Green. D.L. Moody. John Wesley. Mother Theresea. All the greatest popes, cardinals, monks, nuns, saints, pastors, evangelists, and missionaries that history remembers, and many that history does not.

A mighty company indeed.

“…in whose mighty company I shall no longer be ashamed.”

Are you ready?

There is still time.

Forgetting what is behind...
Derrick and David