So, I saw Ender’s Game, the movie, last night. This is not a movie review, but the movie wasn’t too bad, I guess. It’s just when you love a book, and have for 20 years, it’s hard to see it reduced so dramatically. Ditto all 18 movie parts of that massive volume, The Hobbit, ditto The Lord of the Rings, etc., etc. But that’s not what this is about. Please just allow, for the sake of argument, that it’s common for movie adaptations of beloved books to be disappointing, underwhelming affairs that leave us hungry for more. At best, they still feel so much LESS than they could be.
This got me thinking about my own life, and how in many ways it’s based on a book. I don’t mean this to be corny, but my story is the story of Jesus, because I’m united to him in his death and resurrection. I’m his, part of his bride; I’m in him and my life is in him. I love him. He is my Master and my God. I get that from a book. Yes, from elsewhere as well, but the story is in the book.
My life, in a way, is a book adaptation. It might be easy to go for the guilt jugular here. We all know the popular, “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to prove you guilty?”
Kind of a, “What have you done for me lately?” approach. But…
If you were accused of being someone desperately in need of grace, would there be enough honesty in your life to prove it?
A little different, I know, but maybe worth thinking about, especially for all of us “older brother” types. I’m not an open book, because I’m afraid of what you might read in me.
Hey, sometimes I’m a poor adaptation of The Story. Other times I’m a breathing testament, a witness to the holy, extraordinary reality of the coming New World.
I don’t mean to shame you here, though shame is not alwayss a bad goad, I guess. But it’s kind of exciting to think about really loving a story so much that it transforms us, that we’d be positively cheerful in living it out. Not as a show, but as an outworking of a blooming reality. Usually this kind of thing isn’t done sitting down, or through abdication and passivity (temptations for me). In the best stories, in the best movies, characters we love do things.
Action!