(Post by: Madie Hobbs)
I’ll confess, I have an entirely different blog post, half written, lying in an open Word document in another window. I wasn’t quite sure where it was going, but I thought it was shaping up to be pretty good.
Now, I’m starting from scratch. For some reason, I know that other post isn’t what you need to hear today.
I’m thinking about The Lord of the Rings again, to no one’s surprise at all. In all the past years of Blogmas my first posts have pertained to some element of the incredible trilogy, and while this year was almost an exception, none of us successfully escaped it.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story by now, I can’t stress to you enough the importance of Tolkien’s story. They truly are second only to Scripture in my mind in terms of what they can teach about good and evil, about humanity, progress, creation, and beauty. The writing and conveying of thoughts are unrivaled, and Tolkien steeps all he does in the wisdom of Christendom.
In The Return of the King, the final installment in the LOTR trilogy, Tolkien talks about the rise of evil in Middle Earth, and how it came about. Sauron and Saruman are the two main forces of evil in the books, both with a keen and jealous desire for the One Ring, which can dominate Middle Earth in one fell sweep if given to the wrong force. Orcs are their mutated creation, taken from elves, which were once fair and beautiful, who were promised power and blood, and who took the false bate. They are now hungry only for destruction, chaos, and death.
What Tolkien points out about these forces is that neither of them simply came into being one day, with their vast numbers and skilled warriors already intact.
No, in fact their creation came about rather slowly. Tolkien says that man after man after man, meant to be beacons of leadership and light in their positions of kingship, slowly began to neglect their true tasks.
This is how evil was born.
In fact, the Black Gate, which now houses Mordor, the land which personifies evil and holds within its walls the one place where the Ring can be destroyed, once belonged to Gondor, the greatest city of Men. It went unprotected and unnoticed by its kings for so long that evil had no need even to fight for their territory. When man tried to fight to take it back, the hour was later than any realized.
You may now be thinking, “Alright Madie, we get it, you’re obsessed. But what does this have to do with Christmas?”
What a well-timed questioned, dear reader.
My point is that Christmas is worth defending. It is worth protecting, while evil batters and breaks it at all angles.
Christmas has for so long been a holiday which is innocent, beautiful, and full of cheer. It is a good thing. I don’t mean this in a basic, rudimentary way. I mean it in the most spiritual sense of the word. Goodness is the foundation of our Savior. It is what prompted him to pursue incarnation in the first place.
But how do we do this?
That, reader, is actually quite simple.
So often, we think that if we wish to defeat evil, we must be great warriors with large social platforms and people who will follow us headlong into battle. A day may come when we are called to that, but it is not this day.
This day, as Tolkien puts so eloquently in The Hobbit, it is small acts of kindness and love which keep the darkness at bay. Which stores up our gates, which we cannot afford to forget. It is the everyday deeds of ordinary folks which ensure that the elves around us are not turned into orcs, and the One Ring can go on being destroyed day after day.
We must ensure that evil can never be birthed merely by our inaction. For inaction is what darkness craves most. A people easily conquered are a people plagued by indecision and lack of conviction.
As you set out to celebrate Christmas, understand that every decision you make has the power to expand or shrink the darkness around you.
Yours is the Kingdom, yours is the gate. Take up your sword, speak life into those in front of you, and keep the darkness at bay, one everyday deed at a time.
The Few 
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