I went on a date last night with my wife. It was a good one ... and it was free. Our Life Group gave us a gift card at a nice restaurant for hosting the group at our house for the last year or so. I was also given two movie tickets for hosting a contest with the theatrical release of Expelled back in the summer. We were given the gift card back in May, too. I held on to 'em for a long time and finally the expiration date on the movie passes called my name and beckoned me to make plans. I made sure our busy calendar had an opening and I booked a reservation at the restaurant. One of the couples in the Life Group offered to watch our kids for the night, so we dropped 'em off and went out. We enjoyed some really good fish (salmon) done up perfect, with stuff like crab meat garnishings and nice sauce. We had a funny chocolate bread pudding dessert, which featured some vanilla ice cream on top. Then we went to the movies to see The Day The Earth Stood Still.
There was a part in the movie where Klaatu, Keanu Reeves' character, who was an alien sent to save the earth from the humans that are destroying it. He is trusted by a doctor ("Helen Benson," played by Jennifer Connelly), who takes him to a special meeting place for a special someone. Turns out the meeting place is a McDonald's, but the fast food joint does have some nice booths inside, where Klaatu meets up with an elderly gentleman that lives somewhere in Asia. This other guy is a fellow agent/alien sent some 70 years ago to moniter the human race. His report is not too positive. "They're a destructive race..." and the report concludes that the entire human race should be eliminated so that the planet they are destroying will be saved and safe for habitation by other civilizations in the universe. But he pauses to tell Kiaatu that he doesn't want to leave on the next sphere out. "I've grown to love them," he says.
Isn't that kind of like our Messiah? I thought it was a nice picture of how God feels about the human race. He came down, God-incarnate, and lived among an inferior race for some 33 years. As He was being killed by that destructive human race, He asked His Father to "forgive them, for they know not what they do." Moses acted this way, and so did Noah, when God indicated that He wanted to destroy the human race. It's neat to find pictures in culture that express the way that God engages with us.
I remember hearing a missionary story about a guy somewhere in the Asia Pacific region and they had a place of refuge, where someone running for his life (usually running from the justice catching up to him for a crime), where he would not be harmed. This was like a "meeting place" for the missionary, where he could have a conversation with someone from that culture and have a point of reference that tied biblical truth with that particular people group. God had set up places of refuge in his dealings with Israel, and He also provides a safe refuge and a place for eternal forgiveness, which is both beautiful and practical. I love that.
Oh yeah, I thought I saw Cynthia Ettinger in the movie in a couple places. A lady that was part of the Secretary of Defense's "inner circle" of military personnel sure was a dead ringer for the drama student star-in-the-making from our high school. I didn't see her name in the credits afterward, but I guess sometimes in movies minor roles don't get credited ... or maybe it wasn't her.
I looked on the site for the movie and found this information and art contest about GORTS (a creature labeled as "Genetically Organized Robotic Technology"): check it out.