The name Rivendell comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books The Hobbit and his Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Rivendell was the home of Elrond of the Elves, a place of rest and refuge for friendly travelers, and it comes from the words “riven”, meaning cloven or split, and “dell”, meaning valley. Tolkien’s inspiration for Elrond’s home was the deeply cleft Lauterbrunnen Valley in the Swiss Alps, which he visited in 1911. Tolkien tell us that Elrond’s “house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or storytelling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.  Evil things did not come into that valley.”

Virtually everyone who visits the Lauterbrunnen Valley finds it a place of such profound beauty that, like Tolkien before them, they experience periods of longing or unspeakable joy as they gaze at the valley and the three mountain peaks that surround it, the Monch, the Eiger and the Jungfrau. 

Many philosophers and psychologists have often observed that mankind lives with a sense of exile, of alienation, of a longing for the perfect home, a place of true contentment.  The writer C.S. Lewis believed that when we experience intense or profound moments of longing or unspeakable joy -- a desire for an indefinable numinous, cosmic something that is beyond our grasp -- it must be because we desire an object that our natural world cannot supply.  The desire does not guarantee that we will achieve the other world, but it does suggest that we are creatures who are capable of achieving it and who were made to achieve it.  And that is the strongest argument there is for God, and for the accuracy of the Biblical narrative.  We once had the perfect home, the Garden of Eden, a place of joy and peace and fellowship with the God who created us, surrounded by His glory.  But when we sought to live our lives on our own terms (which is what sin is – living a self-centered life instead of a God-centered life), when we sought our own glory, we lost our home, and we have been seeking it ever since.  Because of our rebellion we are restless, homesick, and this world does not satisfy.  We were made for a home like Rivendell, and our longing is evidence that it exists.

Christians believe that the way back to Rivendell, to true contentment, where we can rest from our never-ending attempts to justify our existence and make our lives meaningful, is by acknowledging our offense and seeking the grace and mercy of the God who created us.   God sent His son into our world, in the person of Jesus Christ, to rescue us from our self-absorption and endless efforts to prove ourselves, by becoming our righteousness and justification, providing the way back to a relationship with God, not by our works, but through faith in what He has done.  And when we abandon our self-righteousness and trust in what Christ has done, our relationship with God is restored, and we can dwell with Him.  The contentment we find in His presence is not unlike the joy and peace that Elves, Hobbits and Men find in Tolkien’s mythical Rivendell.  Our homesickness is cured.

We live in a world surrounded by those who are seeking Rivendell, but who have not yet found it.  They experience a longing for home deep in their hearts, but they don’t yet understand that that longing is really for God, and the only way their restlessness will be satisfied is by faith in the work of Jesus Christ to restore our relationship with their Creator.  So, Rivendell Cycling provides experiences to consider the Christian gospel, and to encourage the proclamation of its good news.