Breaking Good and the Saints of God on Earth
Imagine Hollywood’s newest movies starring Bruce Almighty: Live Free or Die Gently, Life Wish, First Life, Acts of Kindness, Forgiveness, Virtue City, or Color of Day. They all have an aura of Breaking Good about them, of doing good with a vengeance.
Imagine some of God’s Saints living on earth today. What a stir St Peter would cause in the Vatican and the World News. Interview with St Francis of Assisi? What a difference in how St Teresa of Calcutta would be viewed. Or would there be a difference? That is the whole point. God’s Saints are living on earth.
What is their secret as they live their daily lives along side of us? If you want to be a miracle worker, the bible stories tell you how. When they ran out of wine at the wedding feast at Cana, Mary said, “Do what he tells you” (John 2:5). Simply, do what Jesus tells you and you will accomplish wonders.
For fun, I will describe my new movie Breaking Good starring the Douglas McArthur. Here are just some of his lines: “We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.” “The enemy is in front of us, the enemy is behind us, the enemy is to the right and to the left of us. They can't get away this time!” “Have a good plan, execute it violently, and do it today.”
I will give my star a few soliloquy speeches to showcase what is good and right. On aging McArthur says: “Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubts; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.”
“In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.”
More sage advice from my star: “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
And as our movie winds to a close, a few more quotes from this true star of life: “It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle field but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, Our Father Who Art in Heaven.”
You are an act of God. Not in the sense that you do damage that can’t be prevented, but that you are God’s plan unfolding as it should. “The one who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
“The tragedy of life is what dies inside of us while we live.” Albert Schweitzer.
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