Todays promise: God will conquer death What is real? O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? 1 Corinthians 15:55 NLT Redemptive Reality Roberto Benigni, who wrote, directed, and starred in Life is Beautiful, is a comic genius who has been called the Italian Charlie Chaplin. But the subject of his 1997 film, the Holocaust, is anything but funny. Benignis character, a sad-sack waiter named Guido, courts the affections of a local schoolteacher and through various hilarious adventures wins her heart. They marry and have a son. Then things take a dark turn: Father and son, who are Jewish, are sent to a concentration camp. To shield his son from the horrors theyre going through, Guido concocts a wild story, telling the boy that the whole experience is really just an elaborate game. How did Benigni dare to use humor in a film about a great moral evil? He did it by expressing the Christian idea that theres more to life than what we see. In the scene in which the father is being led away to be killed, he spots his son and makes a funny face. The message is that there is something that triumphs over even death, some transcendent reality that, even in this ultimate moment of gravity, enables Guido to make his son laugh. Most of our cultural leaders operate from a purely naturalistic perspective, but Scripture teaches that there are eternal things. Life is Beautiful is not the gospel story, but it does point to the gospel because its about how Gods redemptive reality trumps the very worst this world has to offer. Adapted from How Now Shall We Live? Devotional by Charles Colson (Tyndale) pp 581-82 TODAYS ENCOURAGING WORD - 10/21/2013 Jesus told him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. --John 14:6, NLT Love Written in Red God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16, NKJV For God so loved you that He gave His Son, His only Son, the Son Whom He loved - He gave heavens most precious Treasure - He gave everything He had - in order to offer you eternal life. Do you doubt the love of God? Why? Because of the bad things that He allows to happen to good people? Because of the unfairness and injustice and unkindness and misery and suffering and pain and cruelty of life? Some questions we wont have answers for until we get to heaven. But one thing we can know for sure is that God loves you and me. How do we know that? We know it by just looking at the cross where He proved His love for the world that mocks Him and ignores Him and despises Him and scorns Him and rejects Him. We look at the cross and see I love you written in red - the red of Christs blood.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:58:51 +0000