Flying

When you fly half-way around the world, time does funny things. From the US to our SE Asian destination, we lost half a day. When time behaves that way, it makes it very hard to do a daily photo blog. It is also more challenging due to the fact that you only see the insides of airports and airplanes for over 36 hours, get little sleep, and have little to no chance to get on the internet.

However, I got some nice shots during our trip. Not always "beauty" exactly, but visually interesting, anyway. I actually had a little trouble choosing which ones to use, but that could be due partly to the jet lag.

We watched a movie on one of the legs of our journey. It was "The Beaver" with Mel Gibson. Pretty good, a little disturbing. Mel does crazy well. He is truly seeking, I believe.

It was a movie mostly dealing with the pain in life, and how we cope with it. The message was uplifting and touching, without being too sappy or contrived. What made me sad, however, was that there was no God at all in the story.

When you're talking about people looking for answers, it seems unfortunate that The Answer is never considered. Not only did He write the story, He is the main character. He is the Eternal Reality that holds this temporary world together. Any story that leaves Him out is woefully incomplete. It's like writing about the sunrise, while denying the existence of the sun. "For in Him we live, move, and have our being."

And yet a huge percentage of people today leave Him out of their lives completely. Even we who claim to follow Him mostly reserve Him for Sundays and for when we're in a jam. And we wonder why we can't make sense of life.

But I will be the first one to admit that "Christian" movies and stories are on a whole, so hokey as to be embarrassing. With a few exceptions, movies that present God as the answer come off cheesy and out of touch.

I wonder how one would write a story that was gripping and gritty with God at the center. I mean, the truth is, it's happening all around us every day. But most of us see ourselves as the center of our own dramas, remaining blind the greater story in which we each play a tiny part.