The Hospitality of Goldberry

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s epic tale of hope, friendship, and the undoing of evil, there are many brave and beautiful women who change the tide of the war. Queens and warrior women, their courage and defiance shine as bright lights among the shadows of Middle Earth.

But there is one woman who is barely mentioned in the pages of the epic, who didn’t even make it into the movie, and yet who has perhaps the most important story of them all.

Goldberry, daughter of the River-woman and wife to Tom Bombadil (who is himself an enigmatic and mysterious character), dances across a few brief pages of The Fellowship of the Ring, and is never mentioned again. We don’t know where she came from, only that Tom found her by the river one day, singing, and promptly took her home with him. Neither do we know what happens to her and her husband in the Fourth Age of Middle Earth, when peace finally rests over the land. All we know is that for two brief nights, she and her husband provided a resting place for the hobbits on their quest.

Goldberry, dressed in green, golden haired and graceful, takes the hobbits wholly by surprise, as they stumble over her threshold straight from the horrific embrace of a murderous old willow tree that was trying to kill them. They enter Goldberry and Tom’s home and find light all about them, a table groaning with food, and soft beds for their aching bodies.

In the midst of a dark and evil wood that has grown perilous as the years have rolled by, Tom and Goldberry have established an outpost of hope and safety. As Goldberry tells the hobbits, “Nothing passes door and window here save moonlight and starlight and wind off the hill-top.” The purity and courage of Tom and Goldberry is of such caliber that they do not even have to bar their doors and shut their windows against the dark wood; they are so courageous in the face of evil that it doesn’t dare antagonize them. The darkness knows when it has been beaten.

Goldberry doesn’t do anything grand or epic while the hobbits are there. She sets the table, makes meals, cleans, and cooks for her guests. Rather lowly work for such a beautiful and mysterious woman, and yet she does it with such grace and beauty, working in harmony with her husband, that the hobbits marvel. And she sings to them, easing their hearts, and sends them on their way with a blessing.

The hobbits then traipse off straight into one of the worst mishaps of their entire exhausting and brutal journey, an encounter with the wicked barrow wights that nearly destroy them. However, for the two days prior they had tasted of the hospitality of Goldberry and Tom, had rested in their home and found strength for the journey, and it is that which gives them the courage to fight the wights, and to call for help from Tom.

I was recently struck rather forcefully with the realization that, if it hadn’t been for Goldberry and Tom, the hobbits would probably never have made it to their final destination. Those few nights of shelter from evil made a way for the travelers to be renewed and eased so that they might continue on their way. In the small offering of food and shelter, a way was made for the destroying of the ring of power and the shadow departing from the world, for “everything sad to come untrue.” And yet compared to so many others in the story, the Bombadils are barely mentioned.

So too, do our humble and quiet lives make a difference in the grand story of redemption. As we faithfully and often wearily tend to our families, raise our children, and open our homes and hearts to strangers and friends alike along the way, we pave the way for the saving of the world. Claiming a place on earth for the kingdom sends a defiant message to the enemy that we are going to dig our roots in deep and hold on. Who knows what effect your sacrifice of hospitality will have on another life, a life that may do great and mighty things for the kingdom of God? You are doing great and mighty things for His kingdom, friend. Stick in there. And while you’re at it, sing while you work. It makes the tasks all the sweeter. Join the song of eternity, for one day “everything sad is going to come untrue.”

“If she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet…” – 1 Timothy 5:10