Welcome to a break point, a daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Great stories often involve seemingly fortuitous but ultimately significant meetings.

Lucy meets Mr. Tumness in a snowy wood in the lion the witch in the wardrobe.

Four hobbits, meet the mysterious stranger at the prancing pony, that's the fellowship of the ring.

Two disciples meet Jesus on the road to a meas,

but failed to recognize him.

Now that last story, of course, happens to be true.

Still, the other two stories, fantasy, though they may be,

contain precious truths about God and evil, Christ, and friendship.

And it's worth noting that their existence is owed to another providential meeting, one that took place 98 years ago this month.

As Diana Glier wrote in her book Bandersnatch,

S Lewis and J. R. R.R. Tolkien,

had their first run in in 1936

at an English tea with fellow Oxford faculty.

By all accounts, the two did not hit it off at first,

in part because Lewis was still an atheist in Tolkien it about Roman Catholic.

Lewis even wrote of Tolkien in his diary at the time, saying, quote,

no harm in him only needs a smack or so in fact as

Glier put it Lewis and Tolkien and I quote here again had different interests

and personalities they came from different religious traditions. They had different academic

...