Film Friday Colt Seavers gets blown up, smashed through a windscreen, and hurled off a building. But that’s all in a day’s work for him, he’s a stunt man, and one of the best. But when a stunt goes wrong and he injures his back he steps away from all that, which sadly means he also turns away from Jody Moreno, a camera operator and the love of his life. Eighteen months later he is wooed back to work on a film Jody is now directing. However, all is not what it seems in movieland and plenty of bangs and crashes and wallops soon follow. As you might imagine, this is a tale full of thrills and spills. Stunt men have a simple sign after a stunt has been performed, the stick a fist out of the wreckage of crumpled vehicle or collapsed building and give a thumbs up sign. All is well. But when Jody asks Colt if he is doing all right after his accident and the difficult eighteen months of hiatus that followed it, he nods and smiles and gives a thumbs up. But Jody can see through this, she knows him. He may pretend all is well, but it’s not really.
How often do we offer a thumbs up from the wreckage of our lives? There are many reasons for this – we may not know how to express what we are struggling with, we may not want to, it may be inappropriate in that time and place, or we may be aware that others don’t have the time to listen. I’m grateful for the gift of prayer in those difficult times, grateful that we can take anything to God. When one of the muppets, Elmo, recently asked on social media how everyone was doing, there was an outpouring of people expressing their pain and worries. I guess that this wasn’t unlike praying,
in Elmo folks saw someone who was accepting and encouraging. This is what I find with Jesus, God who has lived with skin on and knows the angst of life of earth. We can pour out our troubles to the one who said, ‘In this world you will have troubles, but be encouraged, I have overcome the world.’ John 16 v 33
I love the way the Psalms are such a mix of praying – psalm 8 assures us that we are created by God, unique and precious, with him giving us honour. Psalm 88 on the other hands is for those times when we feel lost and confused and hurting. It ends with the line ‘Darkness is my only friend.’ Not unlike the opening line of the song The Sound of Silence – ‘Hello darkness my old friend.’
We don’t have to come with a pretend thumbs up to God, we can tell him everything, bring it all, no masks, no cover up. He has made us and he understands us.
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