The Fire That Sharpened Tolkien

For nearly two decades, a small group of friends met on Thursday evenings in C.S. Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford. They called themselves the Inklings — Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and a rotating handful of others. The routine was simple: someone would read aloud from a work-in-progress, and the rest would respond with honest, sometimes bruising, feedback.

It was in those sessions that Tolkien read early chapters of The Lord of the Rings — sometimes to restless sighs, sometimes to genuine wonder. Lewis tested portions of The Screwtape Letters on those same ears. They debated theology, challenged careless reasoning, and held one another steady through war, loss, and creative exhaustion.

Without that community, some of the most beloved Christian literature of the twentieth century might never have been completed. Tolkien nearly abandoned his masterwork more than once. It was Lewis who kept urging him on. And years before that, it was Tolkien's quiet, persistent friendship that helped draw Lewis from atheism to living faith in Christ.

No one becomes who the Almighty created them to be alone. The writer of Hebrews understood this: "Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together" (Hebrews 10:24–25). The Inklings stirred each other — and the world is richer for it.

Who is stirring you? And whose unfinished work are you meant to encourage? The community God places around you is not accidental. It is part of how He finishes what He started in you.