It's A Wonderful Black and White Life!

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NKJ)

      Nick and I watched the Christmas classic "It's A Wonderful Life" last night - in black and white and without surround sound.  Some would call it another form of child abuse, but I think the message is worth the pain. 

     About halfway through the movie, Nick asked, "Why is this considered a Christmas movie?"  I hadn't thought about it, but at least 80 percent of the plot takes place during the non-Christmas majority of the year - where we live, where George Bailey lives with little to celebrate, or so he thinks.

     Poor George never gets what he's sure he wants: to get out of his small hometown, Bedford Falls, to go anywhere else and do remarkable things.  But, everyone else's needs and opportunities thwart his dreams.  Stuck with menial and unglamorous duties in Bedford Falls, George confuses lack of adventure with lack of significance. He sees himself as a cog in the machinery until Clarence the angel lifts the veil and George glimpses why God placed him in Bedford Falls to hash out life.

     We grab for a handfull of God for life's obvious crises and celebrations, but the plateaus seem to be where we forget our lives count. As faces in the crowd, we need to know God's working out His unfathomable purposes. ("Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.") 

     Most of us don't venture out as missionaries, evangelists, or Christian artists.  Most of us feel like indistinguishable parts of the "rabble" of believers who worship, pray, praise, thank, sing, and give regularly. But God's Word promises what we do counts for Him, even if the veil hasn't been lifted as eye-proof.  In God technology, even lives that seem black-and-white, with no surround sound, extend invisibly into other lives making us the richest people in town. 

  

"Spend a lot of time in prayer.

Always be watchful and thankful."

Colossians 4:2



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