After a particularly angry thunderstorm I decided to settle in for the night with a new blockbuster movie. The film is basically about a futuristic world where earth is attacked by underwater sea monsters that seem hell bent on kicking our butts. So world leaders get together and come up with a plan to create robots that are neurologically linked to two human co-pilots who enter the robots and then engage in hand-to-hand combat against the sea monsters.
Now aside from all the dramatic Hollywood scenes and the lack of a real romance in the plot (I’m a chick, we live for these things) the movie touches on some really emotional stuff. Towards the end, two pilots decide the only way they can beat these monsters is by sacrificing themselves as a bomb that will detonate underwater. Now contrary to popular belief, I am no thug when it comes to the real soppy parts of movies. Watching those men, look each other in the eye and decide together that they will sacrifice their lives in order to save mankind had me crying buckets. I held the screen of my laptop and cry- whispered “don’t do it” so many times I actually thought for a moment they could hear me. Anyway, they died and mankind was saved (hooray!).
After the movie (and after me reminding myself that those actors are in fact alive and well and probably on some island somewhere drinking mojito’s and spending the money they earned off that film) I got to thinking about our Saviour Jesus Christ. How often have we heard the story of the crucifixion, nodded our heads, touched our hearts and said “he died for me”, while at the same time mentally checking things off our grocery lists or thinking about the boy who never called back? How often do we truly allow the revelation that Christ sacrificed his unstained life for people who gladly had him hung without a care in the world, to shake us? To cause an earthquake in the depth of our foundations and have us crying as much as we do when we watch Bridget Jones’ Diary movies or our favourite football team lose? Do we really, really understand what exactly it is Jesus did? How much he gave so that we could live? He might not have been on a Hollywood set, in a tight cat suit costume fighting an awesomely made robot monster but that really doesn’t matter does it? Because what He did goes beyond anything that could ever be re-enacted on a Hollywood stage. He fought and conquered a real monster. The mother of all monsters; Satan. Clothed in nothing but spiritual armour, Jesus went to the cross as a one-man-soldier on the front lines for a nation that wasn’t even aware its city had fallen. Now, that story at first might not sound like much, Jesus being hung on a wooden cross and not going “out” the way we all expected a hero should go. He didn’t go charging at the enemy with swords and axes, roaring a battle cry that would have shaken a pride of lions.
No.
Jesus did something bigger than that.
See, he fought for His people in the spiritual realm where things like weapons and strategy won’t save you. The greatest weapon is not nuclear or made of steel. Its something deeper and stronger than that. Its love. And with love, Jesus defeated the enemy and saved us.
I sat dumbfounded for a few minutes. I held my hands in my lap and silently wept. I pictured Jesus, mentally holding a picture of me, like the soldiers who carry photographs of their sweethearts when they go to war. I saw Jesus kissing my photo, and then I envisioned him putting the photograph back in the pocket of his robe. I saw him set his eyes upon the cross…upon His battlefield… And go to war for me. For mankind.
Now that’s a story that kicks any Hollywood movie’s behind.
Lucy V. is a 22 year old writer and student whose found her happy ever after in Jesus. She’s also my mentee and has made me very proud to call her friend!
