First of all, the prof is very cool. I like her style of teaching. She broke down the structure of all stories (stasis, catalystic event, opposition, crisis, climax resolution) and talked about it was something ingrained in us as humans by the greatest Author of the greatest Story, God. She explained how this archetype fits the story of God and His church.
To be honest, I've heard the breakdown of stories before in english/writing courses throughout my life, but I don't think I thought about it AS deeply in the context of the Gospel as I just have. She talked about how no author would knowingly enter their own story if they knew they would die and suffer in it. Its like if Emma Thompson's character in Stranger than Fiction, wrote into her story that she would push Will Ferrell's character out of the way and be killed by the bus herself. That just wouldn't happen, yet, God did that very thing. He entered his story as a man, Jesus Christ, into time and space, fully aware of that He would die. To express this, the prof showed this clip from Life is Beautiful. I've never seen this movie before, so I didn't know what was going to happen.
Anyway, in this clip the father and son have been arrested and are being moved to a concentration camp, while the mother is away. When the mother comes back to see that her husband and son are gone she goes to the train station where her family is to try to get them back. When she arrives she speaks to the head nazi officer and says, "There's been a mistake, my husband and son are on that train." He confirms to her that there has been no mistake in putting them on the train and tells her to go home (she's not Jewish). Then, she says to the officer, "I want to get on that train," as the train begins to pull away. At first, he ignores her, but after she insists, he stops the train, gets two guards to open up a traincar and fulfills her request . She gets onto that train, knowing that she is going to face pain, suffering and (most likely) death.
After watching this clip, some people began to tear up. The professor began to make the connection to the Gospel and she too got a little choked up. Honestly, I want that. I want to be so enamored with what God has done for me personally and for the world, that I cannot help but have to take a brief moment to gather myself. Not for the sake of saying I have that or looking more spiritual like a pharisee, but to be able to have so deep a love of God and so full an understanding of His work, that I can say I know Him like I know a close friend. To know Him so well that I'd be so moved when thinking about how much suffering He went through for someone as meaningless as me. Yeah, I want that and the reason I don't is because I don't love God as much as I should. So, I think one of my goals here is to learn to love God more.
I hope that you will join me in this journey as well. It'd be such a blessing to be able to say after three-ish years that you and I loved God more than that day than the day you read this post. That's my prayer for you and for me.
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