Strengthened and Carried

 
The following dialogue is an excerpt from the adaptation of J. R. Tolkien's epic novel, The Lord of the Rings.

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going..." (The Two Towers).

Many of us, faced with a situation that overwhelms, upends, shatters, or at least creates deep fissures, have echoed Frodo’s words, “I can’t do this…” Sometimes we uttered the statement audibly, at other times in our minds, but whatever form it took, we made the statement with absolute certainty. “I can’t do this!” Like the people Sam describes in his response to Frodo, each of us have opportunities to give up but can choose to go on; thankfully, we are not required to do so in our own strength. Hear the words of our Father spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand’” (Isaiah 41:10).He also makes this promise in Isaiah 46:4: “Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.”

Be encouraged.