In this case, it was George Clooney's disembodied voice floating in space to a panic-stricken Sandra Bullock which stuck in my mind - "You must detach, if you don't detach, that arm's gonna carry you too far!Listen to my voice, you need to focus". Wise words, sound advice indeed...especially when everything in your life is whirling literally out of control and you are spinning around, not knowing which way is up or down, and in danger of drifting off into eternal darkness. The hapless heroine has been swept off balance as their space shuttle gets hit by high speed debris fall-out and is hanging on for dear life onto a broken-off 'arm' which is carrying her out into the big yonder of infinity. Because there is no gravity in space, she would be condemned to drift 'forever out there'. She needs to let go of the arm, so that the hero, who is still tethered to the shuttle, can reach her.
Just like that, we grab at anything and everything life has to offer; thinking that's the way to live it up. But actually that's not so. To really live well, we need to know what to grab and what to detach from. There are many 'voices' telling us this, that or the other thing is good, but voices can be very deceptive, even delusional, especially our own. Indeed, more so our own, because humans have a very natural tendency to credit ourselves with being ever so smart. Clooney played the part of an experienced veteran astronaut, who 'has seen it all, been there, done that' - an expert who knows his stuff inside-out. Bullock on the other hand is a brilliant bio-med engineer on her first space shuttle mission, certainly full of head-knowledge but otherwise a novice in space. When the emergency happens and everything goes topsy-turvy in her world, it is his 'outside' voice which calms her down with practical instructions on what to do and what not to do. I can imagine how scary it must have been, willing herself to let go of the one obviously solid thing that seems to be her only hope, but as it turned out, hanging onto the drifting arm would surely have resulted in her death instead. It was only when she chose to listen and obey another much wiser more experienced person that she was led to real safety. To do that, she had to tune out her own voice and focus on his instead, trusting that he knew what was best for her in the circumstances.
How many of us would choose to trust another with our life? Not many, I dare say. Yet that is exactly what God tells us to do. Someone once said, unless we let go and come to the end of ourselves, we will never know God since He can't begin anything in us when we are so full of us. We may well ask, why should we trust Him whom we cannot see? I can think of only 1 good reason, which is really quite sufficient in itself and that is - if God is our Creator, surely He knows best how we should handle the life He's given us. The more I ponder over this, the more I suspect all the objections/arguments about the existence of God is really a psychological cover-up for our own human inadequacies to trust in someone else other than our brilliant selves. Perhaps deep down, we are just cowards at heart, too scared to let go and let God take over, because we are afraid of and/or unwilling to accept what He may do, if we allow Him to enter the nice little cocoon-world we have woven out of our own human ingenuity. Agnostic/atheist-turned-Christian physicist-geneticist Francis Collins terms this tendency as a 'cop-out'. Of coz our pride would never admit this. So we build 1001 'smoke-screens' to support our lofty educated stand that we don't need a God who can't prove Himself according to our standards and who doesn't act according to how we think He should act. We don't see how small we make God, trying to bring Him down to our level.
Instead we think we know better; after all we homo sapiens are the highest in the chain of living species; we have the biggest brains, so we must be the smartest. And we don't need anyone to tell us how to live life, since we have been at it for centuries upon centuries. No other species can match our intelligence ; just look at all the smart gadgets we have invented and all the technological advances mankind has made in all fields of knowledge. It's an impressive record for sure. So if there's a god that's worthy of accolade and worship, it should be us - Hail, Human - not some vague mysterious Being Out There Somewhere, who can't be bent to our will. Indeed there are a lot of perfectly logical excuses to shut out His voice, and just hurtle our way through this space in time we term as our life.
But if our heroine had carried on, insisting on her own way, she would have died, not lived. She didn't know if the 'voice' was right in telling her to detach from her own 'security blanket'; still she trusted, obeyed and got yanked back ultimately to the very real and comforting presence behind the voice. Unfortunately as movies go, things didn't get better; instead there came a bigger crisis, when her rescuer purposefully detached himself from her. This time, as both of them got entangled, the only way she would survive was for him to release the hook that bound them together. Thus our hero (like all good heroes) sacrifices his life so she could live. Never mind that scientifically speaking, this is absolutely illogical; hey, it's a movie, dumber things have happened in movies. So it is with the subsequent scene where the (dead) hero 'miraculously' reappears alive at just the right moment to 'kick-start' the poor damsel who has by now given up and is waiting to die all alone. He turns out to be a hallucination but that in effect 'rejuvenates' our fren and imbues such fresh strength and inspiration into her that she goes all out to fight for survival.
I am reminded many times in my life, it seems as if God purposely 'detaches' from me, He seemingly doesn't answer my prayers, I don't 'feel' Him when I need Him. But that's only how it seems. Actually He's still there, always there and He's no hallucination. Jesus Christ is alive, the same yesterday, today and forever more (Hebrews 13:8). This is the 1 inalienable indestructible Truth that I know that I know that I know - my Savior resurrected, therefore the same blessed promise is mine to hope in, experience and enjoy. It's all well and easy to claim we will survive whatever, but when the crunch comes, how many will collapse like the movie-screen heroine gripped by fear of the inevitable reality called death? How many will despair like her, not even knowing how to pray since no one taught her?
I don't want to just curl up and die into oblivion. I am ever so mindful of and grateful to a merciful God that I don't have to figure out which buttons to press, which gear to engage, which trajectory to plot to get my life-ship safely into heaven's harbor; my Commander-in-Chief Captain Jesus will beam me up "home" when my time on earth is done, since I have called on Him. My name is already on His shuttle-list of 'passengers', the price of my ticket already paid for on His account.
I especially liked the end scene, where the exhausted sole survivor struggles to shore, and clutching the sand of the beach in her hands, says 'Thank you'. I wonder who she is thanking...her lucky stars? Fate? Her survival instincts? Or a dead man who was good to her? Me, as my eyes take in the final screen-shots of the wonder that is planet earth, I too say thank You, to a Man who died on a cross and then rose from the dead 2000 years ago, proving there is a God who loves me and will never let me go adrift ever. I don't need gravity to anchor my life; I just need to detach from all other things, listen to His voice and focus on Him to lead me to the ultimate safety of Himself.
"...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" - Ephesians 3:17-19
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