My initial worry for the movie subsided and I immediately realized that God will work in the best and mysterious ways that our limited minds wouldn’t understand…in the present time. My faith in God has grown a lot in the past few years that now I could say without a doubt that God usually does explain and show us what He WAS doing in our life when we didn’t understand. God in a dress, sure, if it will help Mack have an open heart, God WILL. Shoot, if my earthly father beat me like that, I’d have fatherly issues, too. It’s an awesome wonder that God will break all that is norm just to help and heal us. To look at the bigger picture, we must have patience. It shows this throughout the movie. I’m also emphasizing the time that Mack spent in the garden with Sarayu. He called it messy, but as the camera pans out unto the sky in the end of the scene. BAM. Beautiful mess.
The Holy Trinity is an easy thing to explain if a person has a willing heart. If someone were to ask me to explain what it means, It’s so easy to say, “it’s God, it’s all God. God three in one” It takes BIG faith to fully understand something like this. I once was asked who was in Heaven if God was on earth to prove to me that what I believe was false and impossible, but my newly believing heart more than a decade ago believed God could do anything for the good of His sons and daughters. Did I understand it? No, but I’ve always imagined that God was fragments of eyes in all corners of His creation. Do I fully understand it now? I think so! But my mind is so limited sometimes that I get a headache trying to visualize it COMPLETELY. Just like the headaches I get when I try to multitask too many things at once, and that my friends, is how mom brain was created. But God’s presence in all corners of earth and galaxy? How is it not possible? After all, God can do anything.
I want to talk about goosebumps a little bit. No, not those creepy ones that make you want to flee the room because you think someone is behind you! It’s the goosebumps that make you feel extremely warm inside. Give me like about ten minutes before I get to my point, I had too much coffee and my brain is running a-mock! The scene where Mack meets Wisdom and she tries to make him understand by giving him the power of the Judge. It is a difficult thing to understand or discern why and how God could forgive these horrible people. Murderers, rapists, liars, manipulators, and adulterers! When WE judge, we condemn them all to hell. We don’t really have that “much” heart outside of family and friends when the time really counts for it. It takes lots of effort. Admit it.
We may forget what forgiveness and repenting does, but God never forgets. Forgiving someone does not excuse the sin, but to accept and realize God will be the judge of the sinners. There are consequences to all bad things, and in life, we see it and recognize it. People are made in the image of God, and when we run away from that image because of our sin or the sin of our ancestors, we are buried in all that is not of God. Sin is death, and it is true. We are buried in shame and fear. We are shackled in chains that we cannot get out of. If we stay here, our minds and heart will die. Fear is like a weed, it can grow out of control. Shame keeps you there. We no longer understand love, we no longer understand God. What happens to a poisoned mind and a cold heart? Death, and you do harm to those around you. It may be harm through words, or harm through actions.
I do believe that these are the cause of ongoing sin, there is a root of it somewhere and until it is weeded, it will keep going. But to understand God’s heart… we must see the true living nature of our own hearts and where it came from. Wisdom painted the perfect illustration on how forgiving a parent’s heart is without excusing the sin that is done. As a parent, no matter what my children has done or will do in the future… it does not erase the love I have for them. I will always be forgiving, and will always love them, and would always give myself to lift or save them. It doesn’t mean that my heart wouldn’t HURT, and it doesn’t mean that I will excuse their wrongdoings. There is a lot of pain that associate with wrongdoings. Would I remove them from my life because they have hurt me or someone else? No. As a parent, I will always encourage and teach them to repent and go back to the true nature of their hearts… and that heart is of God.
That is love. God’s heart is so beautiful and loving that He does these things to save us, that He sent His son, that He made himself FLESH to save us. So if He can do anything, why doesn’t He just remove all that is bad? I would love to prison my kids in my house forever so that they will never step into the world to recognize evil, be hurt by evil, or even be tempted to DO evil. Are they going to listen to me? Probably not. ;/ Are they going to sneak out? Probably. God does not want slaves, and if I turned my children into slaves…Would they see me as loving? If God turned us into slaves, would we see Him as loving? God wants a relationship, He wants love and He wants to teach it.. Love isn’t a feeling, it is an action. We forget all the time that it’s not a feeling. It makes sense to say I love you, but it is extremely questionable to one’s grammar to even say I sad you. I happy you. I mad you… therefore love is the best action one can have and we all have this ability. An action requires effort and practice like I have to practice to stop being so sleepy to get the kids ready for school. By the way, Monday should be an option.
The goosebumps I was talking about was that my husband and I just had a conversation about this prior to watching this movie. The love that we have for our children is equal. There are no favorites. There is NO possible way that we could give up one. If some tragedy happens, and we are only able to save JUST one? I am so sure of it that we both will go through dangers to save all. They are all different but the love is the same. We love all three of them the same that we will give up everything for all of them. It’s so amazing and GOOSEBUMPS inducing to realize THAT is God’s heart. It is no wonder why God did what He did, and it is no wonder why God still hasn’t given up to save all of us. Like I mentioned before, there are a lot of messages in this movie. There is a lot to take in. It takes so much faith to understand or to even be willing to completely understand. This movie is deep in the light hearted of ways. You will laugh, you will cry, you will think, and you will be humbled. At the end of the movie, it even tests your faith. Do you believe?
* This post is in reflections of the movie, The Shack. It was released on March 2017.
