I have always loved Beauty and the Beast. I had so many Belle dress up clothes when I was little I wore them more than my regular clothes. I used to think “tale as old as time” was actually “telladora time” no matter how many times my parents told me it wasn’t. But until I got older, I didn’t realize how many life lessons this story actually teaches.
It all starts with a song Belle sings while walking through her picturesque French village, which brings a number of questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
“Little town, it’s a quiet village, every day like the one before”
“There goes the baker with his tray, like always
The same old bread and rolls to sell
Every morning just the same
Since the morning that we came
To this poor provincial town”
Belle is expressing what so many of us feel: boredom. We are bored with our jobs, bored with school, and bored from our day to day schedule that just continues to repeat itself. We are bored of our routine.
But Belle has something she loves that distracts her from the boredom of the day to day… reading. She is captivated by the beauty, romance, and adventure inside her books. In her heart, she longs to be understood and swept up into a fairy tale that proves there is more to life than the same everyday worries.
“I want much more than this provincial life!
I want adventure in the great wide somewhere
I want it more than I can tell
And for once it might be grand
To have someone understand
I want so much more than they’ve got planned”
We have desires and wishes written on our hearts. We want to believe that there is something bigger and greater out there for us. However, we tend to repress these desires and convince ourselves that they aren’t true. We leave the movie theater thinking about how our lives could never be so exciting and adventurous. It’s just unattainable… right?
Wrong! What we fail to realize is that we are already part of a greater and more amazing story. This story reaches back thousands of years and definitely contains beauty, romance, and adventure. In fact, we are a part of the greatest romance of all time.
The routine of our day to day lives can distract us from the fact that God is there, and He wants to take us on a great adventure. It may be around the world or it may be right next door. The great thing is that my life is already much more than “this provincial life!” God invites all of us to live to the fullest wherever we happen to be. He has already swept us up into His divine story of salvation and redemption, and everyday is a brand new chapter.
