Unbroken
Recently, I went to see the movie "Unbroken," a true story about young Louie Zamperini, a former Olympic runner and Army Air Forces bombardier, who, after crash-landing in the Pacific Ocean and drifting on disintegrating rafts for 27 days along with 2 other members of his crew: sun-burned swollen-lipped and unable to stand under their own dwindled to nothing bodies, heard the sound of a life-giving (so they thought) U.S. (turned out to be Japanese) airplane, and were picked up and deposited in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp where they - and particularly Zamperini - were treated horribly and ultimately survived the nightmare. It's a tough movie to watch, and I didn't want to spoil anything, so you'll have to see - or read - the story for yourself - for the blow by blow (and I do mean that literally too much of the time).
At one point, when still at sea, surrounded by sharks, and enduring a major storm, young Zamperini turns to God and prays, as is often the case in such drastic life-or-death situations, that if God would save him, he would give his entire life to God's service. The movie, The End (with Burt Reynolds) had a similar scene in water, where Reynolds' character made such a promise, but the closer he got to shore, the more he took back his promise. It's easy to make such promises in desperate times and not mean them. But this wasn't the case with Zamperini. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't really get into his spiritual experience as I've heard that the book did, but the degree of resolve and strength in this young man's life clearly spoke to a source way beyond a natural one.
I will let others write an actual review of the movie - this is more of a meditation based on one of its themes: Letting God work in your life to do His will through you. At one point early in his incarceration, Zamperini was tempted to try to get revenge on his captor - a particularly sadistic Japanese camp leader. But one of his fellow POWs told him, NO - the way you win here is to survive! It was extremely difficult but in learning to keep his mouth shut, and call on God for strength, he ended up winning over the sadistic Sergeant. And this was the lesson for me that I want to pass on.
In our lives, particularly when we see injustice, we immediately go to our "Plan A," - that is, we come up with OUR PLAN. We follow the age-old (non-Biblical) adage, "God helps those who help themselves." We act, manipulate, get tough or otherwise aggressive (or maybe that's just me as a former NYer. You can take the girl out of NY....) On second thought, I think this is more than a NY trait. One does not have to look very far into the Old Testament to find a plethora of tales of people from Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and David on, who took their situations into their own hands. And at the same time, each of these same men later also learned to trust and do thing's God's way, which, in every instance, ended up more successfully.
Being January and the month of making resolutions, which I try NOT to make every year (in an effort not to break them), I have made a decision (not a resolution) to spend more time with God in His Word in order to grow in trust of Him in order to better follow HIS ways of getting things done, rather than my own. Anyone want to join me?
