Fantastic movie. The incredible attention to detail in this film allowed for a mesmerizing immersion into the world of stop motion animation - the perfect backdrop for a deliberate and unhurried unfolding of the main character’s story. And truly magical (gets a little weird at the end though - wouldn't necessarily recommend for kids). I went to see this during it's opening week in August.
Before I found myself immersed though - I think it was sometime during the previews - I sensed God nudging me to pay extra attention. He seemed to be putting me on alert to catch a nugget of truth He had for me in this movie. So I leaned in closer and was probably even more immersed than I otherwise would have been.
I don’t recommend building your entire relationship with God on films, music, art, nature or personal “senses” of Him speaking. But outside of the historically reliable and time-tested, transformative truth of Scripture, I’ve found that God will also use just about any means possible to reach us. These more subjective means of hearing God should always be interpreted in light of God’s special revelation of Holy Scripture. It keeps in check what could be hurtful, crazy, or just plain incorrect. So I would recommend listening for God always in everything, but what a shedding of light Scripture brings to all things! Knowing it - really truly knowing it and wrestling with all its paradoxes - is like opening a big, wide door to a dark room and letting daylight stream in and make sense of everything in the room that before you could only bump into and make sense of by feeling.
So there I am in a dark theater. Mesmerized, immersed, and leaning in close to listen.
The movie itself is about a storyteller and his story. He goes from being the storyteller to being the center of the story. The boy on an adventure. The main character on a quest.
At one point a main character says to another, “You are my quest.”
Fireworks.
Maybe I should explain what happened the week before I found myself here. A group of friends had been praying for me. One of the friends saw a treasure map and got the word “quest” for me. He said I was on this quest that seemed kinda crazy to people around me, that it didn’t make a lot of sense to others. Nevertheless I was on this journey on this “quest” with God.
You are my quest
I don’t watch movies very often. And I don’t often hear God telling me to pay attention during them. I find myself at this movie, not knowing much about it, essentially there because my brother wants me to see it. Then before the movie starts I hear God telling me to listen to this one. I'd already tucked away "quest" in my heart from the prayer the week before but I don't know what's coming in this movie. It turns out the movie is about a quest. Then “You are my quest” is spoken and I sense God was just using it to confirm further what my friends had already prayed for me. Here's how the prayer and quote have come to be unpacked for me over the last couple months:
I’m not simply on an adventure with God. He is the adventure. Though there are thrills, and I’ve been a thrill seeker, I am no longer thrill seeking. Though there is romance and mystery those are no longer the goals either. Though there are friends and family, the most wonderful friends and family and the most frequent cause of my heart aching these days, they are not my source of fulfillment.
I wish I could share what amazingly wonderful, beautiful things I’ve said no to in order to get to this place. NOT to build myself up in any way. Not at all. But if I could only express just how much God is worth all those other things. And even worth the people - oh my heart! - even the people who may never fully understand how incredibly dear to me they are.
Yet He is worth it all. He really, truly is. I hope against all hope that someone who doesn’t know Him, really know Him, is reading these words and can experience even a taste of how good, how sweet, how adventurous and wondrous and completely fulfilling life with Christ is. Maybe enough of a taste to seek God as revealed in Christ - the fulfillment of promises made in Hebrew scriptures centuries before He appeared. Not that I want anyone to seek out religion, but to seek truth, testing everything....
I’m still in the middle of this journey so I say this with a level of timidness - but I want to say with confidence - that I could go anywhere and do anything because with God as my adventure and with Him as my completely satisfying love, nothing is too dirty or too scary. Nothing is too boring or too average. Nothing is too good for me or too far beneath me. Nothing is too important or too small. I could be in Philadelphia or I could be in Oklahoma. I am so over believing that the grass is greener anywhere other than where I am. Right now I’m still confident that God has led me here to Philadelphia. Maybe I’ll be in Oklahoma or China or Syria tomorrow. But today I am here so today here is perfect. Today is an amazing gift. Today I say to Him “You are my quest”. And I say to anyone else - He is worth the search. He is worth the quest.
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