Reading Time: 4 minutes

Shortly after the wheels left the ground, I connected my phone to the plane’s inflight entertainment options and scrolled through the list of available movies. This COVID-19 virus has poked its pointy spheres into every part of our lives, and the paltry selection I discovered now was no exception. Hollywood’s shut down over the last few months meant there were no new titles since the last time I flew in March. There was one entry, however, that I had never seen, a cult classic that debuted in 1985 – The Goonies! Somehow I had missed this Spielberg offering and with its running time clocking in at an hour and fifty-three minutes, I decided I had just enough time to right that wrong.

The story follows a band of misfits in their desperate search for a pirate’s hidden treasure. They hope the wealth they find will save the home of one of the boys from being demolished by a greedy land developer. On top of that, a recently escaped convict and his sniveling brother and domineering mother join the pursuit, and soon the fun begins. But something dawned on me as I watched this less than stellar movie – the bad guys in movies are often not the brightest bulbs in the bunch! Sure, this was a kids movie, and the villains had an exaggerated level of clumsiness and stupidity, but the same things can be found in movies intended for a much older audience. Usually, in those tales, the criminal’s inflated egos cause them to concoct overly complicated ways of getting rid of the hero. Rather than a quick shot to the head, the hero is strapped to an elaborate mechanism that will eventuate in his demise but actually ends up giving him just enough time to escape, overpower his captor and win the day. 

Of course, the simple reason for this literary device is so the story can be told. Think how short the yarn would be if the hero was knocked off in the first thirty minutes. No one would want to see such a movie with the hero’s early exit. The writer of the story always ensures the good guy’s ultimate victory. Storyline tension is created when we learn of the rogue’s brilliance and past nefarious accomplishments. But somehow he always overlooks some tiny detail in his perfect plan, a snag that the hero discovers and pulls to its ultimate unraveling. We expect this little twist, and writers must wrack their brains for new and interesting ways to deliver it to us. Why is this? Because we all live within the storyline of our Creator and this is the rhythm we’ve come to expect in our stories.

History’s facts are the fodder for our fiction, not the other way around. The world we live in has known its share of awful tyrants and wicked leaders, whose power expanded as their sinister tentacles stretched around the globe. For those living under their horrific reigns, it must have seemed as though the world was surely ending. But we look for them now and nothing remains of their dark and wretched goals (see Psa. 37:35-36). And why is this? Oh, a lengthy list of mighty Generals and fearless warriors could be read in response to this query, but even here we’d find the same little details that the tyrant overlooked, or perhaps some subtle change in weather that turned the tide and brought his broadening empire to a halt. The Author ensures the storyline progresses to its joyful end, though sometimes that’s hard to see in the middle of the book.

If my little thesis is true, that God Himself superintends the story to its sure and certain triumph, the question that most often follows is, then why write the all those tragic chapters in between? While this brief blog post is certainly not a full-orbed study of why bad things happen in a good God’s world, still I think we already know the answer to this aching, age-old question. Glory shines much brighter against the backdrop of peril and despair. How much sweeter is redeeming love than a love that has never known a trial. Etched upon our souls is this longing, not just for peace, but for a peace that has overcome a conflict. There are contours of each virtue that can’t be seen on sunny days. The gray clouds and lightning must reveal them. How could mercy even be discovered without wounds that needed dressing? And how could God’s great and glorious justice ever be perceived without its triumph over all this weary world’s wickedness?

You see, the story that’s unfolding isn’t ours; it’s a tale of greater glory than we at present understand. And all our hard-won treasures are but echoes of this splendor that remains to be revealed. “The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power…” wrote Calvin, and every painful line the Master Author writes serves only to accentuate the satisfaction when we see it! The final chapter of this story has no end. The story arch crescendos to a climax that will sustain for endless ages yet to come. Watch and wait with eager expectation. Let every novel, headline, and inflight entertainment remind you of this fact. Our understanding won’t be suspended forever. “Put your seat backs and tray tables in their upright and locked position. We’ll be landing soon.”