RonSheely.com

Joyce and I saw Avatar today.

Avatar was entertaining, yet disappointing. James Cameron spent ten years writing and developing the story. It had the makings of a great novel, on the scale of Lord of The Rings, or perhaps Dune. It was very much like Dances With Wolves — an outsider, against all odds, bonds with an indigenous tribe, and is forced to make loyalty decisions pitted against his conscience and his own people/country. James Cameron ruined the plot with political correctness in not one, but two ways. First, he made the obvious yet banal connection with the “evil” corporation verses the “true” and “pure” Rain Forest and the “noble savage”, making the Rain Forest a living character in the story. Second, he connected the “noble” terrorists with the uncivilized imperialists. Regardless of political leanings, I think any of these themes can make for a good story, but mixing the three in the way he did, while ignoring more important threads running through the story, he made it predictable and banal. In a nutshell, Hollywood ruined what could have been great. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie, yet it was what I expected. I still recommend seeing it, though I will probably not purchase the DVD.

I saw my new granddaughter Evelyn tonight for the first time. She looks like her sister. I held her for about half an hour, gently bouncing her when she cried, just like I did with her mother thirty years ago. And like her mother, Evelyn was easily comforted. Later, I watched mother and baby together. I glanced over to grandma Joyce, then back to our first born, with her baby girl, and couldn’t help pondering the miracle that occured in all our lives thirty years ago. There was just Joyce and I, and we could not have children, yet there our child was, with her child. I thought of our second and third daughters, and all three wonderful sons-in-law, all created out of nothing.

Thank you Lord Jesus for your loving healing mercy, for being Who You Are, the Father of mercies, the blessed Creator of heaven and earth, the Author and Finisher of our faith, the Guardian of our souls, for knowing us before the foundation of the world.

You … are … Lord.