Sighs That Escape: When This World Isn't Our True Home

Hebrews 11 and Revelation 21 has been on my mind. Both passages deal with the Christian belief that this world is not our true home, that we’re merely passing through, and that Heaven — and the new earth that it will support (Rev 21:1) — is the highest reality and our true home.

And somehow this led me to the film Labor Day with Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet, which was released in theaters almost a year ago, on January 31, 2014.

I know, random, right?

It’s actually a powerful movie. It’s not “Christian” (i.e. not made by a Christian studio or by Christians, as far as I know), but it contains general truths in it that I found inspiring and compatible/edifying to my faith.

The movie is about an escaped convict named Frank (Josh Brolin) who finds shelter (as he is on the run) with a single mom and her son. Here’s an excerpt from my original review of it from when I saw it in theaters:

"…in the background of their little island of happiness [the single mother’s home where Frank is hiding], Frank himself becomes symbolic of goals that every person on earth is chasing: joy, peace, fulfillment, a place to call home, a state of fixed security — happiness.

"In this film, the characters experience these things at certain moments, yet there is a constant tension of finiteness. He’s an escaped convict on the run, just passing through, seeking shelter temporarily. How could this happiness ever last? The story of Frank’s arrival becomes a parable.

"From a Biblical perspective, all of the joys and pleasures of this world — even the wholesome ones like raising a family, going to baseball games, celebrating birthdays — are fleeting sighs that escape into the sky the moment we exhale. Our hearts are not supposed to be invested wholly in finding happiness in this world because we were not made for this world. We are citizens of a heavenly city. In fact, Hebrews 11 calls us “strangers and pilgrims” on this earth.

"I doubt the filmmakers intended to create such a powerful sermon illustration with this film, but they did, whether they wanted to or not."

You can read the full review here (which includes parental guidance info; the film has some content that’s not family-friendly and might be too depressing for some people).

It’s amazing to find inspiration in unexpected places — even movies that we would deem “secular.” It just shows how the yearning for true joy, for permanence, for Heaven, has been written on everyone’s heart.

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Bright Star: A Poem for Christmas Day

Although this poem isn’t about Christmas, it’s a love poem that depicts a fiery love in a wintry season of life. It has the paradox of Christmas in it — the paradox being an event of fire (the fiery love of God breathed into human flesh through Jesus’ birth) that strikes its light in the bleak dark of winter. Even though I believe that Jesus was born during one of the warmer seasons, not the winter (the shepherds would not have had their flocks in open pasture at night in the winter; shepherds in those days had little make-shift shelters for their flocks during cold weather), the imagery remains true: Jesus, the Light of the World, was born in a dark, wintry night of human history. He was a summer fire birthed into winter deadness.

The poem has this fire-in-winter quality to it — the still fire of a star brooding, yearning over the frost of earth in its slumber — in this case I’ll pretend it’s a Christmas Eve slumber.

And, on that note, a happy, merry Christmas to you — I hope you enjoy the poem!

Bright Star by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

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Full Transcript of Newly Discovered C.S. Lewis Letter to Mrs. Ellis -- 19 August 1945

[transcription of a newly discovered, unpublished letter from C.S. Lewis to Mrs. Ellis, dated 19 August 1945, discovered by somebody in an old copy of the C.S. Lewis book “The Problem of Pain”]

…satisfaction in seeing that the picture even suits the room very well and that we don’t regret having bought it. In fact I meant by ‘things going well’ just that security — or illusion of security — which you also regard as unhealthy. Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony. It jumps under one’s ribs and tickles down one’s back and makes one forget meals and keeps one (delightedly) sleepless o’ nights. It shocks one awake where the other puts one to sleep. My private table is one second of Joy is worth twelve hours of Pleasure.

I think you really quite agree with me. (N.B. The physical sensations of joy and misery are in my case identical. Just the same thing happens inside me on getting very good or very bad news)

Yours sincerely

C.S. Lewis

P.S. Don’t you know the disappointment when you expected joy from a piece of music and get only pleasure? Like finding Leah when you thought you’d married Rachel!

[Source: I transcribed this by analyzing Lewis’s handwriting in a photo of the letter featured in an article on ChristianityToday.com: http://ift.tt/1vo3Pw0]

#CSLewis, #SurprisedByJoy, #CSLewisLetters

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The Biblical Hope in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"

The rain had already covered the streets and provided glistening surfaces everywhere for the Christmas lights at The Collection to use as mirrors. During the Christmas season, rain makes everything shine brighter — especially where lights are everywhere. This is what it looked like:

It was the perfect atmosphere for emerging from the film The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the final installment of Jackson’s Hobbit saga — and the final appearance of a Middle-Earth movie on the big screen. (The Tolkien Estate refuses to allow any more movie adaptations.)

What struck me about this final film was its poignant Biblical message about having too strong an attachment to the things in this world — whether those things be money, possessions, power, the pleasures and triumphs of a career, even our identities. We saw this same theme in Lord of the Rings with the way characters had to fight against their desire for the Ring. But The Battle of the Five Armies looked at it from a broader perspective: the general love of riches, power, success, importance, a sense of belonging, and financial security that all people crave.

It’s enough to drive anyone mad.

In other words, you didn’t need the One Ring of Power to get caught up in this gold lust. (Though, to be accurate, you did need a giant horde of treasure in which a greedy dragon had been sleeping for 60 years and thus cursing it with his dragonish gold fever.)

But dragons and accursed treasures aside, the point still stands: there is gold fever in this world, and it’s not just obsessive desire for gold and money — it’s the feverish pursuit of any earthly treasure that will not survive past this side of Heaven’s refining fires.

It’s not surprising that we find such a diamond-sharp spiritual truth in The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien infused his books with his Christian beliefs so thoroughly that it is impossible to separate them. Granted, he never wrote anything as an allegory and he did an effective job of making it subtle, down in the unseen foundational layers, but that’s why his Christian worldview comes out in everything; it’s already at the heart of the story.

As a Christian, it’s a wonderful thing to discover in a movie theater; and as a Tolkien fan, it nourishes the soul to hear these powerful messages conveyed through the notes of Middle-Earth — as bittersweet as those notes are (and as bittersweet as Middle-Earth is).

It’s also bittersweet because I knew it’d be the last time we’d have a Middle-Earth movie in the theaters. (Sigh.) I don’t want it to end.

Sure, folks were complaining about stretching The Hobbit into three films. I get their arguments. But, frankly, after seeing this third film, I am glad that it lasted three years. It gave me more opportunities to enjoy Middle-Earth on the big screen, and as soon as this third epic ended, I found my heart wishing that it would just keep going on and on — a new Middle-Earth movie released every December indefinitely.

Some people just don’t get that though, and that’s fine. You go your way, and I’ll go mine. In the end it’s just a movie.

I wrote an official, full review of the film for RockinGodsHouse.com. You can find it here.

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The Discipline of Hope (In the Midst of Overwhelming Odds)

I just found a wonderful article about what the author calls a “discipline of hope.” We are often waiting in the wings of life, yearning for something behind the sunrise that we can’t quite see.

This article from Crosswalk.com adds a profound perspective on that yearning that we keep like a buried treasure deep in our hearts, and here is an excerpt:

"This is one of the reasons I respect Tolkien so much. In spite of our modern cultural expectations that one must grow up in an idyllic setting, Tolkien demonstrated it is possible to have a dark childhood and yet still possess a remarkable and life-affirming imagination. Yet one must wonder, how could someone who had experienced such loss create an idyllic place like the Shire?

"I believe Tolkien’s Christian worldview made the difference. That worldview equipped him to have the discipline of hope. To borrow from the apostle Paul:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:3-5).

"I am convinced that one of Tolkien’s greatest gifts to his readers is not the myths of Numenor, the language of the elves, or the post-dinner song of the dwarves (as impressive as all these things may be). Rather, his greatest gift is an example of the discipline of hope in the midst of overwhelming odds."

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