I wasn't be a doctor. Please do not mistake me, I have every intent to become a doctor, an exceptionally good one at that; patients will know me for my persistence and professionalism, love me for my compassion and confidence. I will become a medical doctor not by birth, not by base expectation or innate qualification, but because I choose this path for myself. I choose medicine for its values, my values: science, finesse, efficiency, compassion, precision, intuition, nuance.
God Tells Better Stories
All told, my personal thoughts regarding cinema concerning matters of Christian faith: the greatest story ever told, ever written, ever imagined has been written by God and God alone. Doesn't it make sense that the most compelling, cliché moments in cinematic stories would align with the story God wrote?
Fading Memories
**SPOILER ALERT: This post contains commentary over the last Season 5 episodes of Chuck from NBC**
Memories tend to fade, though intuitive impressions seem to stick; those forged in the heart – memories of emotion – continue to astound me by their tie to our deeper subconscious. As such, television shows always seem to wrench me in the gut when I follow them through to fruition; Chuck caught me deep and tugged me along to the end.
Long after family vacation, long after the vibrant daiquiri rainbow fades, the bond forged between us will remain. Years after high school, months between our time together, my dearest friends and I remain close to my heart. See, the thing is that memories don't fade, not quite like that. Physiologically speaking, it takes a tremendous rewiring of the human brain to erase emotional impressions, almost like hardwired programs in the motherboard of a computer.
When Sarah forgets Chuck, wiped clean by the intersect, her fundamental memories as an individual from years before remain intact, albeit missing substantial context. Here's the bit that fascinates me and captivates my heart in the show: when faced with Chuck's resolute and hopeful love for her, Sarah can't help but feel her memory of him. She's caught at in impasse, a dissonance between her temporary software and her hardwired memory of Chuck – and she's frozen with uncertainty. The most powerful of human emotions, love wrote itself to her heart where she couldn't hope to completely forget it. Changed forever by the power of love, she lets Chuck close enough to reset her software and reprogram her corrupted memory files. With a laugh and a smile, the sun sets over the ocean – and the small world of Burbank, California once more becomes that which it was meant to be.
It's funny to remember that our human motherboard was initially programmed when we were created, but none other than God himself. The Great Programmer designed our intelligence after His own! We feel and think and interact according in large part to our programming; our fall in Eden precipitated decay in our logic board, so to speak, with the first mistake compounding in subsequent processes. Our after-market software is tainted by the virus we took from the Tree in Eden, and we now execute our acquired programs within our RAM by a flawed system. The virus, introduced in procreative reproduction, is not our original self. We were designed for a greater purpose, but the overwritten software shortfalls that purpose; our purpose is found in our motherboard, in the hardwired processes, in every fiber of our emotional memory from before we formed our own memories as a conscious computing unit.
God's love changed us before we ever knew it, before we booted up for the first cry from the womb – and our motherboard knows His love. Don't you see? We're all Sarah Walker, distrusting of the world we were never made to know and holding no conscious memory of the world God programmed to our hearts. True love gives choice, allows the chance to accept or deny the sacrifice of love – but our Creator loves us more than we could possibly imagine, so very much more than Chuck every loved Sarah.
You are His beloved the bride of Christ. Be blessed. Be loved.
Soapbox Santa
To write any further would promote that very product against which I protest. Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:18 ESV)
Crushing Waves
I feel like I’m never more acutely aware of the phenomenon until I feel a friend has left the ranks, that I'm abandoned, sold out; then I find myself slipping, letting go of what I know is right — and it frightens me. I know who I want to serve, I know what is right and what is wrong, but I can’t help feeling my feet slipping as the waves crash again, again, again across my feet: though they’re planted on the Rock, as my comrades leave my back and let go of my shoulders, I slip on the slippery foam coating the solid truth upon which I stand. I grow weary, cold as the winds whip about my salty, weathered body, the mist of surrounding waves dripping off my nose like so many tears. Down the shore I see another standing — resolutely — yet so many more fallen. But I hold bitterly firm, press on to stand on my Rock. But the greatest challenge of all remains that I not grow bitter or let my mind drift to the suffering, for in that fleeting thought I defeat myself — slipping silently into oblivion, just another drowning soul in the flooding onslaught.
What am I missing from my perspective, brow speckled in salted frost?
Just steps behind me, I’m breaking waves for a fallen fellow, another sentinel who slid in face of a terrible crash; not moments before, they broke the waves for me, and as I stand now, I stand with renewed strength, impassioned to guard my former guardian. Where once I struggled to gain back the slick, warm slab after losing my footing, behind the shelter of my brothers’ and sisters’ frames, now I stand at the front line to offer them a chance to again join the line!
Weariness overtakes us all at some time or another. There is no shame in losing our stance; shame grows from whether we take heart in our broken failure and climb, and in our unbreakable Spirit as we help our brothers and sisters out of the raging surf, back to the solid Rock on which we stand.
Take heart, for you are never alone.
In a shifting world perverted by deception, perception skewed by Satan, our soul foundation is on in our Heavenly Father.
therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am the one who is laying as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’"
On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, and all other ground is sinking sand — in certainty of His sovereignty, I choose to stand.