Monday, January 06, 2014

From the Secret Life of Walter Mitty to Lion Chasers

Yesterday, the Hub City Church family, and my family, stayed after our worship gathering to watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

I have no idea why this movie hasn't done well at the box office. It is fantastic. Maybe we Americans have too short of an attention span. I don't know. But it's a movie worth seeing. And it's worth seeing because most of us are just like Walter.

As a kid Walter had dreams. He was going to backpack across Europe. He was "rad" on the ole skateboard. He was going to be something and do something.

Then his dad died, he had to get a job at Papa John's, and he quit living. He just went through the motions of his job as a negative account manager (he cataloged and processed film negatives for Life Magazine).

The only real living Walter did was in his fantasmic daydreams. 

Then everything changed. He lost a negative (for you young whipper-snappers, this is the thingy that comes out of a camera that you develop into a picture). In order to find this lost negative, number 25, he took off to Greenland, then to Iceland (via a short swim in the frigid Arctic ocean and boat ride), eventually ending up in Afghanistan, only to discover that the negative had been with him all along, albeit hidden. 

I may be crazy, but I think each of us who are followers of Jesus have a hidden treasure. The mundane of life blocks it from our consciousness, but it's there and it's from God.

It's time we stop daydreaming about living. It's time we put an end to living vicariously through our kids or some TV show, comic book hero or movie protagonist. It's time to grab life by the mane and become lion chasers.

For the next seven weeks at Hub City Church we're going to discover just how to do that.  

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