The Long-Expected Dawn

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King, there is a moment that every weary soul needs to hear. The forces of darkness have surrounded Minas Tirith. The Witch-king has broken through the gates. Denethor has surrendered to despair and madness. Everything — absolutely everything — looks lost.

And then, in the darkness before dawn, a rooster crows.

Tolkien writes that it crowed "wild and shrill, without care for war or wizardry, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn." And right behind that small, defiant sound come the horns of Rohan, riding out of the sunrise.

What strikes me is that the rooster didn't wait for proof that morning was coming. It didn't need to see the sun before it sang. It announced the dawn while the sky was still dark.

That is biblical hope. Not optimism, which needs evidence. Not wishful thinking, which ignores reality. Hope — the kind the apostle Paul describes when he writes, "We hope for what we do not yet have, and we wait for it patiently." Hope sings before sunrise because it trusts the character of the One who promised the morning would come.

Some of you are sitting in darkness right now. The gates feel broken. The enemy feels overwhelming. But the Almighty has never once failed to bring the dawn. So lift your voice — even now, especially now — and welcome the morning that is surely coming.