Tonight I went to a movie with my good pal, K. We were celebrating our birthdays, and had a great time together over Ho Ho's, water to wash them down with (YES, we ate more than one! ;-) and then the movie. We saw Amazing Grace, the story about William Wilberforce's fight to end the slave trade in England. Great movie. I would have liked for them to hit us in the head a little more with William's conversion to Christ (no, I'm not being sarcastic, I really mean it), but one step at a time, eh? Maybe seeing this movie will lead someone to study more about Wilberforce's life and they will learn more about Christ that way....
POTENTIAL SPOILER:
The turning point of the movie for me was when Barbara, William's future wife, encouraged him not to give up. He was so beaten down and tired. Everyone around him was telling him that someone else could fight the good fight - it didn't have to be only him. Yet Barbara was able to see that while the fight had made William tired and sick, the fact that the fight had not been won after begun would have been worse torture. So she told him not to give up. She made him get back into the fight. And then of course, victory came.
What happened in the movie sounds so movie-ish and unreal, but this has happened to me before. Not on the huge scale that William was working with, but in my own life, I have felt as if I were at the bottom of a barrel of smelly, slimy fish. I felt like dead weight. And yet there I was, with my husband and precious friends (you know who you are)encouraging me, reassuring me and praying for me. They would not let me give up. And I held on to their words, even though it took awhile for them to take effect, and here I am today, alive to write about it. :-) God is good!
I don't think I will ever be known for being responsible for changing the world, but who knows.....one of my children might. I can dream! And pray! I wonder if I would be in the state of mind I am in today without the encouragement of my two friends and husband, and on the days when I feel as if I'm not doing all that great, I know that I can still receive the needed encouragement to continue on.
Who can you encourage today? Someone needs a kind word from you! You may never know this side of heaven what you could possibly be doing for that person, that person's children and that person's spouse just by saying one tiny encouraging thing. It seems that more than ever, a kind word is precious gold.....or a honeycomb?
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Proverbs 16:24
Great post about a great movie. It has certainly prompted some interest in WW here!
ReplyDeleteNow, re: your question about knowing ahead of time that 4/18 was the anniversary of P. Revere's ride. No mystery there. We are studying American History right now and had read about him, so we pulled out our copy of the poem. That was on 4/17. The third line of the poem is "Twas the 18th of April, in '75..." So that's how we knew. :-)
But a great book for little snippets of daily history is _The Christian Almanac_ which we try to read every day. And sometimes I look ahead for interesting anniversaries to celebrate!