I Can't Carry It for You, But I Can Carry You

Near the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King, Frodo collapses on the slopes of Mount Doom. He has carried the Ring across hundreds of miles, through darkness and betrayal and hunger, and now his body simply cannot go any further. The weight of evil has broken him. He lies on the ash, finished.

And then his friend Sam kneels beside him and says one of the most beautiful lines in all of literature: "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you." He lifts Frodo onto his back and climbs.

Sam could not take away the burden. He could not remove the thing that was destroying his friend. But he could put his own body underneath the one who was suffering and say, "Your weight is mine now."

Tolkien, a devout Catholic, knew exactly what he was writing. He was writing the shape of love itself. Because this is what the Almighty does. He does not always remove the burden — the grief, the illness, the struggle that clings to us. But He puts Himself beneath us. He carries us when we cannot take another step.

And He calls us to do the same for one another. Not to fix every problem or take away every pain, but to kneel beside the person who has collapsed and say, "I am here. Lean on me."

That is the love Paul describes — love that bears all things and endures all things. It is love with dirt under its fingernails, climbing.