One of our team’s favorite things to do at night is to crowd around one of our little 13” laptop screens and watch a movie. We’ve watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Pride and Prejudice, A-Team, etc.
So for the last month I’ve been dying to watch The Dark Knight Rises. It’s been one of my favorite movies ever since I had some friends beg me to start the thing at like midnight last fall (I don’t fair well with late night movies. I usually make it through the first 5 minutes only). Nearly 3 hours later, I was obsessed.
8 Reasons Why It’s the Best:
- Batman. So, duh.
- Tom Hardy
- Tom Hardy as Bane
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt as police officer/detective/ budding Robin Hood
- Michael Caine (He can adopt me as his granddaughter at any time)
- Christian Bale
- Morgan Freeman. Again, duh.
- Anne Hathaway
I think that about sums it up. I love it.
Last night we decided to watch it, and by we, I mean Sarah and I because no one else was interested. And by Sarah and I, I mean Sarah and I for the first half and only me for the last half.
One of my favorite scenes is the prison escape scene. If you’ve seen it, you know the one. See, Bruce Wayne was tricked by Selina Kyle and led straight into the waiting hands of Bane and his men. He promptly gets his butt kicked and is dragged off to this underground prison nicknamed “hell on earth”.
“Home, where I learned the truth about despair, as will you. There’s a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth… Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy… So simple… And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying.”
-Bane
Only one prisoner had ever been able to escape- a child. Bruce Wayne struggles in his cell, tortured by the news of Gotham’s demise at the hands of Bane, gets angry, and decides he’s going to escape. We see him doing pull-ups and push-ups and getting stronger over the months, readying himself for his getaway.
Finally, he feels ready. The scene opens on him walking to the bottom of the hole, a scary looking prisoner wraps the safety rope around his waist, and he begins his ascent. The climb is fairly simple, but the hard part comes when he makes it to one big platform, from which he must leap to a farther off, further up platform.
Everyone is holding his or her breath because this is CRUCIAL. Will he make it?! Can he save Gotham?! He jumps, and falls terribly short, and the rope catches him, bringing him back down to his prison.
He tries again, and fails again.
And then the old man in the jail cell next to him shares some vital information:
Blind Prisoner: You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak.
Bruce Wayne: Why?
Blind Prisoner: How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death.
Bruce Wayne: I do fear death. I fear dying in here, while my city burns, and there’s no one there to save it.
Blind Prisoner: Then make the climb.
Bruce Wayne: How?
Blind Prisoner: As the child did. Without the rope. Then fear will find you again.
Here’s the ending. OH it’s so good!!!
So see, he had to jump without being attached to anything below- any form of safety net.
And man, ain’t that the truth with Jesus? So many times we climb and we climb and we think we’re doing awesome and then we jump, expecting to leap to extraordinary heights…and we fall, we fail. And we get defeated in our botched attempt.
God calls us to not have a safety net, to not hold onto anything else that we might think will break our fall, if we fail. He tells us to climb without the rope, trusting that he has equipped us with everything we need and will guide us every step of the way.
It’s the idea that we don’t fear death, but we have a healthy fear of the Lord combined with a longing to be in His presence. He gives us the courage to jump, to leap into His Hope and His Grace.
And let me tell you, when you make that jump-with nothing tethering you to the old, the ugly, the oppressive past- and when you grab hold of what He has in store for you, when you climb to newfound freedom- it’s an irreplaceable feeling.
That’s kind of how I feel, with this whole World Race thing. I think there are about 1.37843 million prisons in my life that I’ve got to climb out of- prisons of self-doubt, of judgment, of pride, of envy, of anger, of greed, and it goes on. And the Lord has asked me and will continue to ask me to climb out of quite a few of those throughout this specific adventure.
One prison I’ve had to climb out of was my prison of comfort. I liked my comfort zone, and as much as I wanted to grow, I wanted to grow and stay comfortable. But, turns out that’s just not really how it works- weird, huh?
So this month, our first month living as a team (Month one was an all-squad month) I really didn’t want to be here. I was missing home, I wanted pumpkin cookies and cold weather and pretty leather boots paired with cute scarves and some football on Saturday nights. I wanted my friends from other teams, the ones I had grown close with through training camp, Launch, and Month One.
And you know what my rope was? The fact that we had Wi-Fi at our fingertips at our ministry site.
And I felt like I needed to say no to that comfort, for this first week. That in order to make the jump he was asking me to make into deep intentionality with my team, I had to leave behind the things I loved and missed at home. So I haven’t been on Facebook, Instagram, iMessage, FaceTime, or Skype all week.
And that was dang hard at first. But can I tell you, at the end of the week, how freeing it’s been?
That I jumped, and I landed in good, life giving conversations with my team.
That I jumped, and landed in God’s breathtaking beauty as he showed me how deeply I need His Word.
That I jumped, and in just a week, have seen more light than I would have ever seen staring into my computer screen longing for something that is simply not my reality right now.
I’m learning to trust that it is safer to climb without a rope if it means I get to be with Jesus, than it is to climb with a rope and never get to experience the love He desires to give me.
As Peter might say, it’s better to be out in the waves with Jesus than back in the boat without him.
So I’m climbing out without a rope, one prison at a time.
Maybe you are, too.
