Film Friday In the film Hamnet, the alternative name for Hamlet, William Shakespeare meets Agnus and they fall in love and get married. Before long they have a family and Will is off to London to launch his career in writing plays. However while he is away plague hits their family and terrible tragedy strikes. Agnus is so broken by the loss that her pain begins to turn to bitterness. At one point, when she is about to reluctantly see one of her husband’s plays, she ask her brother what to do. Keep your heart open, he gently tells her.
Many people in the Bible suffer terrible loss. When Naomi moves to Moab she loses her husband and two sons, in the book of Ruth. And she is in so much pain she even changes her name to Bitter. As she travels home to Bethlehem, it is her daughter-in-law who embodies hope for her, promising to stick with her through thick and thin, life and death. And little by little Ruth’s dedication brings Naomi back to life. So often people embody hope in the Bible, for others. Gideon, Moses, Elizabeth, Esther, Paul, Mary and many others, stand up with courage and grace, and so bring hope to others. And ultimately, in a world heavily blighted by sin and loss, it would be Jesus who would take his place on a cross to become the ultimate symbol of our hope for all time.
A little P.S. whilst watching this film, surprisingly a tiny, beautiful butterfly kept settling on the huge screen in the cinema, and after a while I wondered if this was a little reminder of hope in the midst of today’s troubles.
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