We are now one quarter of the way through our journey. This evening, my wife and I watched a really superb movie: The Martian Child. It is about a widowed man who adopts a young boy (an 8 year old who hides in a cardboard box and tells everyone he from Mars, hence the title).
The story is about love and acceptance and being there through thick and thin. One of the most important lines in the film is where John, the adoptive father (played by John Cusack) tells young Dennis, “I will never, never, never, never, never, never leave you.” Be prepared for a welling of emotions several times throughout the film.
John’s promise to Dennis, which is a substantive part of the breakthrough that occurs between them, is an icon of the promise that Jesus makes to us in Hebrews 13:5 “…I will never leave you or forsake you.” It is the essence of our sense of security in Christ.
We were made to be loved with an eternal love and there is a part of us that seeks out the commitments that should reach that deepest need. It is the thing we all long for in life, an expression of dependable, unyielding love. Husbands and wives want it from each other, children want it from their parents. Friends sometimes reach deep enough to touch it.
When we have that love, we know that they have our back, that they will always be there, dependable to the end and even beyond.
That is what God promises us. That is what we ourselves aspire to. It is what every one of us needs.
