Why I Read About Heroes

My mind has been impressed with variations on a theme from my readings lately. I've been noticing over and over that "heroes" are just ordinary people who keep doing what is set before them to do, even when it's hard and when it's not what they want, nor what they would naturally do.  Sometimes I think we should just assign chapters in great fiction in counseling. :)

"The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo:  adventures, as I used to call them.  I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say.  But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind.  Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually-- their paths were laid that way... But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't.  And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten."  (The Two Towers, Book 4, Chapter 8 "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol," J.R.R. Tolkien)

"Piper's dad had called him a hero earlier.  And Leo couldn't believe some of the things he'd done-- smacking around Cyclopes, disarming exploding doorbells, battling six-armed ogres with construction equipment.  They seemed like they had happened to another person.  He was just Leo Valdez, an orphaned kid from Houston. He'd spent his life running away, and part of him still wanted to run.  What was he thinking, flying toward a cursed mansion to fight more evil monsters?"  (The Lost Hero, Chapter 47, Rick Riordan)

"Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake." Colossians 1:24 [...] " This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom.   (My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers,  September 30th)

I think the Holy Spirit's helping me to be strengthened through the examples of others, to be reached and motivated at the "heart level" rather than the intellectual.

We don't get to choose our own adventures, usually.  We just get to choose whether or not to turn back.