In the midst of all the bad news swirling around us – about which more anon – it may provide some small comfort to commemorate in some way International Hobbit Day, which falls on September 22nd, the traditional ‘birthdays’ of both Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, nephew and uncle respectively. The Hobbit itself – as a book – was published on September 21st, 1937, and the proximity may have been accidental, even if there are no accidents really in God’s providence. The trilogy of the Lord of the Rings begins with Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday.
Th subtitle of the Hobbit was ‘There and Back Again’, which is a parable of life itself. We go out from God, and we must return to God, through the thorns and thistles, but also the meadows and mountains, of the pilgrimage of this life.
Take hope, dear reader. There is a Shire, and we all meet merrily there one day, in God’s good time.
