victory

I think I understand the gospel through some odd mix of the Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Harry Potter. Perhaps heretical, definitely not conservative... but those books are deep.

There is this one point in the Lord of the Rings trilogy when good and evil are warring at Helm's Deep... And the epic charge that the men and elves make when everything seems darkest is in the hope of the dawn.

They fight valiantly and recklessly, but with hope.

And we fight the enemy. We fight our own sinful nature. The death seems to bind us and we feel like we're overtaken, overrun, hopeless and distraught. But the light dawns and we see our hope and our hero (for us, not Gandalf, but Jesus). And the enemy is feeble. The enemy is drawn to its knees. They thought they had taken our only hope, but He rose from the dead. O death, where is your sting?

The battle is already won, and right now, we're just clearing the mess.