Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Heroes

Last month Jeremy and I began watching the first season of Heroes. We got hooked quickly and are now on season 3! The show is about ordinary people who discover they have supernatural abilities such as being able to fly, time travel, regenerate, read minds, generate electricity, walk through walls, etc... Each character goes through a process of discovering what their ability is and how to use it. Some like their new powers, some despise them, and some crave the powers of others. Then comes the decision: to use the power for good or evil. To become a hero or a villain.

While it would be cool to have some of these abilities, God gifts us in different ways. We are each gifted and shaped through our natural talents and our experiences to perform a unique function in the body of Christ. But similar to the characters on the show, we sometimes need to go through a process of discovery and developing our gifts before we can be used effectively. Do you know what you have been gifted to do? I believe Satan tries to make us believe that we aren't special and don't have a valuable part to play in His-story. And if we do discover our gifts, he tries to distract us with busyness or divert us toward worldly pursuits. What defines us is less about what we've been given and more about what we choose to do with it. Will our gifts and abilities remain undiscovered and unused? Will they fall into the hands of the enemy? Or will we use them to bring glory to God and become heroes to our families, our children, and our community? That is a choice we all have to make.

"The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him. In this way we are like various parts of the human body...each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body...let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't"
- Romans 12:3-6 (The Message)

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Moth

My husband and I don't watch much tv. But one show that we are addicted to is LOST. It is like one long mega-movie. To get ourselves excited for Season 5 which is going to start this week we have been re-watching Season 1. It is just as awesome the second time, even when we know what is going to happen! A scene from the episode The Moth jumped out at me. Charlie is suffering from drug withdrawal and John Locke is trying to help him through it. John takes Charlie over to a tree and shows him a moth just about to emerge from a cocoon. He says "It's in there right now struggling, digging its way through the thick hide of the cocoon. Now, I could help it. Take my knife, gently widen the opening and the moth would be free. But it would be too weak to survive. The struggle is nature's way of strengthening it."

When I have a problem, I want God to reach down and fix it...take away my heartache...answer my prayers...instantly. But the struggles that we all face have a purpose. We don't like to go through them, but they shape us into the people we were created to be and make us stronger. As Paul said in Romans 5:4 "we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."

"The key is to recognize that God doesn't cause the problem, but He allows it in order to strengthen our wings so we can soar to our full potential" (Shook)