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    Walking with Bilbo
    Walking with Bilbo
    Walking with Bilbo
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Walking with Bilbo

    By Sarah Arthur

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    2005 Logos Bookstores Award winner for Best Youth Book

    The author of Walking with Frodo takes readers on an adventure of faith with this devotional that relates themes from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit to living the Christian life. Unlike the fateful quest Frodo was asked to carry out, Bilbo's journey came as an unexpected adventure. Readers will be reminded that God chooses us to be unlikely heroes in the adventure of life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTyndale House Publishers
    Release dateFeb 1, 2005
    ISBN9781414332727
    Walking with Bilbo
    Author

    Sarah Arthur

    Sarah is the author of over twelve books ranging from bestselling devotionals to critical engagement with literature. A graduate of Wheaton College and Duke University Divinity School, she's a founding board member of the annual C.S. Lewis Festival and served as writer-in-residence for the Frederick Buechner Writers Workshop at Princeton Theological Seminary. She's also the preliminary fiction judge for the Christianity Today Book Awards, through which she grades on a L’Engle-inspired curve. She can't wait till her two little boys are old enough to be read aloud A Wrinkle in Time.

    Read more from Sarah Arthur

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    Reviews for Walking with Bilbo

    3.5/5

    21 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This was remarkably thoughtful. Tolkien fans, the author knows her stuff. And the topics are integrate well with themes of faith. This shouldn't be that surprising given Tolkien's faith-steeped imagination. I will definitely check out the author's other stuff.
    • 4/5
      A light devotional book based around Tolkien's 'The Hobbit'. The author looks at how the Christian life is an adventure, and we need sometimes to step out of our ordered existence to follow where God leads. Well-written and quite thought-provoking. For teens or adults.
    • 3/5
      This was a pretty good book. I went through it really quickly. And there were a few really good notes that I had to remove from the book that I wanted to save later, for example: Through the treacherous landscapes of sin, God has mapped out the way of righteousness and instructs us to walk in it. "Be good," we hear him saying throughout the pages of the Bible: "Take care of yourself. And stick to the path!" The point of the path is not somehow to lead us away from what the world calls fun, but to help us survive itself with our dignity intact and to enable us to accomplish the mission. But we're not left to do this on our own. God sent Jesus, not only to be our guide and leader, but to be the path itself." Its a great book and I recommend to anyone who loves the Lord

    Book preview

    Walking with Bilbo - Sarah Arthur

    CHAPTER ONE

    LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD MEN (OR HOBBITS)

    I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.

    GANDALF, CHAPTER ONE OF The Hobbit

    Remember those awful middle school gym classes when the teacher selected two captains and told them to take turns picking their teammates, one at a time? Either the captains’ voices were drowned by the clamoring throng (Pick me! Pick me!), or their words echoed in an uncomfortable silence ("I want her but not him; and you, over there—No, not you."). Any twinge of sympathy for those left standing till the end was quickly overpowered by the extreme relief at not being one of them. How unfair it seems that certain people should be chosen (for some of the silliest reasons, too) while others aren’t!

    Then of course, there’s the wretched classroom lecture scenario, usually involving a subject in which you feel hopelessly stupid. While the instructor paces around the podium, you sit quietly in your seat, trying not to move or sneeze or in any way draw attention to yourself. Because you know the firing squad of questions is coming. The instructor will wheel around suddenly and aim a zinger at some poor, unsuspecting student who may or may not have the fortitude to answer. And you hope it won’t be you. (Please don’t pick me. PLEASE.) How unfair it seems that every student will be chosen at some point, including you!

    Hmm. Interesting to compare the two scenarios, isn’t it? In the first, you’re desperate to get the attention of the person in charge rather than suffer the embarrassment of not being selected. In the second, you’re desperate to stay under the radar altogether. But in both situations, you’ll end up getting chosen eventually. The issue isn’t whether or not you’ll be chosen; the issue is when.

    For Mr. Bilbo Baggins—who is about to be selected by one of the most famous captains in all literature—the time is now. Gandalf is in something of a hurry, and the little hobbit doesn’t appear to be doing anything important at the moment. If he’d had his wits about him, Bilbo would’ve disappeared inside his hobbit-hole the minute he saw Gandalf coming. (Please don’t pick me. PLEASE.) But besides being completely unaware of Gandalf’s intentions, Bilbo is also—deep down—an adventurous fellow, though he doesn’t realize it yet.

    In fact, there are a great many things he doesn’t realize, as Gandalf well knows. The wizard tells the dwarves, There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself.⁶ Bilbo is being chosen precisely because Gandalf sees something in him that needs only the chance to come out, and an adventure will do the job nicely. Despite Bilbo’s protests—as well as those of the dwarves—he becomes the chosen and selected burglar for the expedition to the Lonely Mountain.

    Chosen and selected. The words have a nice ring, don’t they? They make us sit up a bit taller, lift our chins a little. Even if, like Bilbo, we’re not sure what the words mean exactly, we rather like the idea of being handpicked for a purpose. It’s not simply because we’re susceptible to flattery, like the dragon, Smaug. Deep down we long to know that we have value and worth in someone’s eyes, that someone thinks we have a role to play in the stories of our

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