The Christian world of … Hobbits?

A biblical Bilbo?

Something Greater than Luck! Gandalf tells the dwarves that he has chosen Bilbo to be the fourteenth member of their company so they can avoid the unlucky number of thirteen, but we are not really meant to think this was the reason Bilbo was selected. Tolkien fills The Hobbit with many so-called lucky occurrences. Perhaps the “luckiest” is when Bilbo is crawling about in pitch black tunnels under the Misty Mountains and just happens to put his hand down on the ring. “A magic ring!” the narrator exclaims. “It was hard to believe he really had found one by accident.” Of course, what may have seemed like an accident at the time was something far more than mere luck. Christians have similar experiences in their own lives, where some highly unlikely coincidence may seem at the time like just that – a coincidence. But later, we see it was not a coincidence at all.

A biblical Bilbo?

A Special Kind of Treasure! Early on, Gandalf promises that the adventure will be very good for Bilbo – and profitable, too. It seems that Gandalf is referring to the one-fourteenth share of Smaug’s treasure that Mr. Baggins has been guaranteed. In the end, Bilbo returns home with a very different sort of treasure, one that will never rust and the kind that thieves cannot break in and steal. In a different kind of story, Bilbo would have left Bag End as a home-loving hobbit and would have come back as a warrior. But this is not the story that Tolkien wants to tell. Bilbo returns home with a renewed appreciation for all the things he previously loved – but now it is an ordinant love not an excessive one. Tolkien suggests that a proper love, celebration, and reverence for all the ordinary things of creation is essential for each of us.