Longing for a Quest?

 

Reading a good fantasy-adventure book or watching movies like The Lord of the Rings can sometimes get a person a little depressed.

John Koenig invented a word for that in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

ringlorn adj. [From ring, a key element in many sagas and myths + -lorn, sorely missing. Pronounced "ring-lawrn."

The wish that the modern world felt as epic as the one depicted in old stories and folktales  -  a place of tragedy and transcendence, of oaths and omens and fates, where everyday life felt like a quest for glory, a mythic bond with an ancient past, or a battle for survival against a clear enemy, rather than an open-ended parlor game where all the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

I've got two thoughts about that:

       1)  Most people in the fictional worlds created by Tolkien and Lewis et al have no idea they're in the midst of a fantastic story. The majority of hobbits living in the Shire went on with their farming without a single thought about dragons or orcs or rings of power.

       2)  For any Christians reading this, we ARE on a great quest. We have been called to carry out the overarching will of the strongest, wisest, most-loving person ever known to mankind. We are the hands and feet of the Creator and Sustainer of Life; determined to defeat the forces of evil and implant Truth, Love, and Harmony in the heart of every wandering soul on the planet.

You want epic? I gotcher epic right here.

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Truth is...Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12 NIV)