The Temptation of the Hobbit

I was able to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It is an amazing and beautiful movie. It's always nice to see your childhood on the big screen done relatively well. While I was watching the movie, I was struck by one scene in particular. The scene where Bilbo viciously stabs the white spider that comes from up from it's hide away and is heading to pick up the ring. The part that struck me most is towards the end of the scene where he yells, "mine!". It's a very intense scene. But it made me think of how sin holds us the same way.

In the movie, Bilbo turns to the ring for reassurance and refers to it as his courage when talking to Gandalf. We do very similar things when it comes to the sins in our lives. We take our security from money and end up loving it, we call drunkenness "liquid courage" and people often times turn to inappropriate sex to feel loved and happy. When we are challenged on this, we say "Mine!" and defend ourselves in many different ways. In the end though, whoever tries to take our sin and help us to do better we are ready to stab. I know, because I've been there myself.

God provides a way out of every temptation that is here. 1 Corinthians 10:13, "The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure." With Jesus, we can drop our rings of power and walk away. We can let the webs of time take everything we thought we needed; because in the end all we need is Christ.

The Sin of Galadriel

Sin. Mine's the Love of Money. Everytime God and I go through this particular sin together all I can see is the scene in Lord of the Rings with Galadriel.

Frodo offers her the ring and she is tempted to take it. To rule with the power that it possess. In the middle of the scene we have Galadriel, flush with power and declaring that we would have a Queen, beautiful and trecherous as the sea. Just the idea of the power burns through her so much that she is momentarily transformed into the powerful Queen of Darkness that she would become upon the acceptance of the ring. In the end, she is able to deflect the temptation for ultimate power and go with her people.

Galadriel shows in those few scenes the way sin burns through all of us.

We give in to the particular ring of power that holds us down. Be it the ring of money, jealousy, lust, love of something more than God, immodesty, pride. We can be glad {Matthew 5:12} just as Galadriel is, because not only is there always a way out of that temptation {1 Corinthians 10:13}; it matures us and moves us on to the next land of plenty and peace that awaits us.