Meant to Find It

In The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a quiet moment early in the story when Frodo, overwhelmed by the burden he carries, says to Gandalf, "I wish it need not have happened in my time." Gandalf's reply has echoed through generations of readers: "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

What strikes me most, though, is what Gandalf says just before this. Speaking of how the Ring came to Frodo's uncle Bilbo, the wizard says, "There was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring — in which case you also were meant to have it."

Tolkien, a devout Catholic, wove into his fiction a truth the Scriptures declare plainly: purpose is not something we manufacture. It is something the Almighty assigns. Jeremiah heard it before he was born. Paul heard it on a road to Damascus. And you may be hearing it right now, in the middle of a season you never would have chosen.

You were not placed in this moment by accident. The God who numbers the stars also numbers your days — and He wastes none of them. Your task is not to wish for a different time, but to be faithful in the one you have been given.