A Gift for the Troubles
By Anthony Casperson
10-19-24

He’d been an average member of society. Loved the quiet of home. Never engaged in adventurous frivolities. And preferred nothing more than the comforts of his simple existence. Bilbo Baggins represented the life of a hobbit well.

Until the wise and tricksy wizard Gandalf set into motion a plan to call Bilbo to something greater.

The events ahead of Bilbo were nothing anyone would call comforting. Trolls nearly ate him. Orcs and goblins and worgs chased after him. Gollum played a game of riddles as an appetizer before trying to kill him. Bilbo fought giant spiders who also wanted to eat him. He hid from elves who’d captured his traveling companions. He even faced angry armies who all wanted the treasure that was in the Lonely Mountain.

And that’s to say nothing about the dragon with whom he literally stood face to face.

But what did Bilbo get out of all of these troublesome events? (Other than character development. Because who would want to talk about that?) The spoils Bilbo gained from the hazardous year he spent on adventure could largely be counted as a sword he named Sting, a mithril chainshirt, and a small box of treasure.

(Okay maybe that all amounts to something many of us would gladly accept. But when compared to the cost of his troubles, and the size of that dragon horde, you get my point.)

Yet, when we move over to The Lord of the Rings, we see Bilbo eventually give all of that to his nephew Frodo. (Although, most of the treasure in the small box had been spent already, so we’re basically just talking about the sword and chainshirt.)

All of that trouble, just so that he could hand over his blessings as a gift for another. Gifts that would come in handy for Frodo’s own troublesome adventure.

Often, when we think about various stories and the trials that the protagonists go through, we’re thinking about ourselves in the protagonists’ place. Would we have decided on the same choices? Could we have made the same sacrifices? Is it even a possibility that we could ever stand under all of that pressure?

But rarely do we consider things from the perspective of the protagonists from later stories. The trials and troubles, along with the gifts and blessings gained from those difficulties, are rarely seen with a thought about how they could help people after us. Or those alongside us.

In the midst of the troubles, we’re thinking about how we can get out of them. And when we’ve made it through the trials, we might even consider how the lessons learned there can help us in later situations. But rarely do we think about how we can be a blessed gift to others after us because of our own growth through experiencing the darkness of life.

We can share in Bilbo’s struggles and fear. We can desire to gain the wisdom and bravery that he does. But are we willing to think about handing over the priceless treasures we’d earned from those experiences to another who’s in need of those very things to face what lies ahead of them?

Are we willing to be a gift for the troubles of another?

As I was thinking about this, my mind went to the story of Joseph from the end of Genesis. He starts the story in comfort. The favored son of his father. Clothed in specially unique clothing. Part of the family through whom God had chosen to work. Things looked great for him.

But that is until God comes in to call Joseph on an adventure.

It starts with a dream where representations of Joseph’s father, mother, and brothers bow down to him. And when he tells his brothers of the dream, they look at him with contempt.

They plotted to kill him. Threw him in a pit. And eventually sold him to slavery. Joseph worked his butt off as a slave in Egypt, only to be falsely accused of sexual misconduct and sent to prison. Again Joseph proved his worth in prison, even being sought after as an interpreter of dreams, only to be forgotten by the servant of Pharaoh who’d been freed just as Joseph had interpreted the dream to mean.

Much later, after the Pharaoh had a dream of his own, the servant finally remembered Joseph. This caused Pharaoh to ask what all of his dreams meant. And using the gift that God had given him all along, Joseph interprets the dream’s meaning. There would be seven good years of overabundance followed by seven bad years of famine that would outstrip the previous abundance.

For his wise council, Joseph was put in charge of the food storage project, and the eventual handing out of the surplus when the famine finally came around.

But this is when the story shifts Joseph from the person blessed through the difficulties of life, into the one who is the blessed gift for others.

The famine became so bad that even Joseph’s family in the land of Canaan found themselves in need. And they went down to Egypt for help. There’s a lot more to the story here, but ultimately, because of Joseph’s willingness to be a blessed gift to others, his family is able to face their own trials and troubles.

And all of the followers of Jesus are blessed from this because that’s the people who became the nation from which our Savior comes.

It’s easy for us to complain and dislike the trials and troubles. We might even find ourselves blessed on the other side of many of those terrible difficulties. But how many of us are able to take Joseph’s perspective found in Genesis 50:20?

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

Can we think beyond ourselves and our stories to see the stories of others for whom we can be a blessing? Ours aren’t the only troubles in this life. And many could really use the blessings we’ve been given along the way. Some might even have their lives depend on those secondhand blessings.

So, let’s take the perspective of how we can help others in their journeys by using the things with which we’ve been blessed. Let’s not just receive gifts for our troubles, but be a gift for theirs.