Old movies

 

Old movie lovers" get together at the house of one of our brethren to watch a movie. And usually the movie is one of the old classics, the nature of which Hollywood doesn't produce anymore. You know, the kind of movie where the good prevails over the evil, the dialogue doesn't require profanity in order to get the plot of the film across, nor is nudity thought to be necessary. Movies made back when morals were still being shown and taught.

Of course, one simply cannot watch a movie without eating something along with it, can one? What started out as "snacks and popcorn" has evolved into full-blown meals now, but don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. By telling you about our "movie nights," I'm just, as we say, "setting the scene" for my editorial thoughts offered for you to consider today.

In order to express my thoughts, I'm going to provide you, in its entirety, with some "movie" thoughts written by a brother in Virginia with whom I share editorial lessons. Rather than try and adapt his thoughts to mine, I'm just going to give his editorial to you as I received it and then tie in my lesson thoughts. Without further ado, here is what Bro. Barry Bryson of Manassas, Virginia wrote.

                                                WHY "SHENANDOAH" IS HARD

I find it increasingly difficult to watch Jimmy Stewart in the classic film "Shenandoah." It has always been one of those films, like "The Hunt For Red October" or "Snow White and the Three Stooges" which, if it is on television, I'll sit and watch it until it is done. But no more. I just can't.

"Shenandoah," if you haven't seen it (and if you haven't, how are you allowed to live in the Commonwealth of Virginia), is about a family farming in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, which has stayed out of the war. But the war crashes in, and by the time we get to the final acene, widowed patriarch, Jimmy Stewart, has lost one son to a bullet, one son and daughter-in-law to marauders, and another son to a POW camp. It's a great film - not without comic relief - a film tailor-made for Stewart, but there are two scenes, both at the end of the movie that I find unbearable.

With two sons dead and one unaccounted for, Stewart goes to the family graveyard to talk to his departed wife, Martha. He tries to tell her about the war, but all he can say is, "It's just like any war: the undertakers are winning it, the old men talk about the need of it, the politicians talk about the glory of it, but the young men fighting it....they just want to go home."

The film, released in 1965, at the beginning of the escalation of America's involvement in Vietnam, is about as close to an anti-war statement as we get from Stewart, who retired as a Brigadier General in the USAF Reserves. Whatever your feelings about our involvement in Vietnam, that statement continues to resonate with anyone who ever prayed about a service man in the field.

The second scene is the final one. Stewart's youngest son, mistaken for a CSA infantryman and taken prisoner, finally makes his way home. This young man, known only as "the boy" in the film, is special to Stewart because his mother died giving birth to him. "The Boy" arrives, battered and on crutches, during worship service. While the congregation sings, father and son are reunited. How many fathers and sons were not reunited in the 1960's (or the 1860's)? Stewart and his stepson, Ronald, were not.

Stewart's stepson Ronald was killed in 1969 by Viet Cong machine-gun fire in Quang Tri Province, with four other Marines. Stewart said publicly that neither he, nor his wife, had any bitterness about the death of their son. "There's our son," Stewart said, "He wanted to be a Marine. He was a good Marine....I don't see it as a tragedy....he conducted himself honorably on the field of battle. You can't consider that as a tragedy....but losing a boy like that, you never get over it."

Of course, Jimmy Stewart didn't know he was going to lose his son when he made "Shenandoah" in 1965 (although as a bomber pilot in the Second World War, he knew plenty about war), but we know it now. I find that I am not up to that kind of omniscience. All I think about is Jimmy Stewart's son getting machine-gunned in Vietnam when I watch that scene.

We have this sort of omniscience because of 20/20 hindsight, and because part of what we are talking about is fictional. God's omniscience is real. He knows exactly how it all will end. And, He cares. (Read Ezek. 18:23-24, or Hosea 11:1-9 if you doubt that God agonizes over the lost). How hard must it be to care and to know? We may experience something of this when we care and suspect. Perhaps someone we love is pursuing a path that will not end well, we see it all happening and are powerless to stop it - perhaps then we know some small fraction of what God feels.

"But God is not powerless," you protest. "He is omnipotent. He can do anything." God cannot violate our free will (again see Ezekiel, chapter 18). Either we serve Him freely, or we do not serve Him at all. Most of us will not serve God and He knows this. (Matt. 7:13-14) And yet, knowing what He knows, He sent Jesus anyway (John 3:16), making provision for billions who will reject that provision.

Let us neither reject, nor forget it.

God wants His children home (Isa. 43:5-7). It's that simple. God wants that Jimmy Stewart ending. This is the reason Jesus died on the cross. Shouldn't we desperately want the same?

                                                                        ***********

I thought that to be a great lesson by Bro. Bryson and a neat way to tie in a scriptural lesson by using things that all of us are familiar with - movies, families and war. When we think about the cited scripture, John 3:16, it makes us aware of the fact that God loves each and everyone of his creation in the same manner as parents love their children. In closing this lesson, I'd like you to consider the difference between God, as a parent, and us.....

We don't know the future. We can only pray for our children's physical and spiritual welfare. God knows the future, what's going to happen, and still He provides a way for everyone to be saved - His Son, Jesus Christ. All the while knowing that most will not take advantage of that provision and will perish eternally.

Ron Covey