I walked into my room tonight to find the wolverine playing on my T.V, and I was surprised to realize that I haven’t seen this movie yet.(cable channels love to play old movies and I don’t usually like re watching them) Well anyways, I knew I hadn’t done my devotions yet, so when the commercial came on, I turned it off and read from a daily devotion on my Bible app. Today’s message was centered on renewal, and being a new creation in Christ means that the old sinful person you once were has gone as a result of you changing into something new, something better. But it also talked about the struggle of removing your old self to become something new, and the struggles we still face all the time. I finished with a few verses from the devotion; Colossians 3: 1-17 “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” I encourage you to read the rest of this passage, for that was only through verse 3. But as I turned the movie back on, the wolverine appears in the wilderness, wearing torn, dirty, clothes and sporting a beard close to Gandalf proportion. (that’s the old white wizard from Lord of the Rings, or the Yooooouuuu shaaaallllll noooooot paaaaassss! guy) He was going through a terrible nightmare and clearly was in an incredibly rough spot, living alone in the woods. The next scene skips to an encounter with a huge grizzly bear, who ended up to be a gentle giant. skipping some more, he comes back to his cave to see that the bear was lying on his belly with an arrow sticking out of it’s back… he pulls the arrow out to find it was an illegal arrow tip, dipped in poison. The bear was still alive, and roaring in agony, the wolverine had no choice but to put it out of it’s misery. The wolverine goes into the small town close by, enters a bar and finds a man telling a false story about his fight with a bear, the wolverine seeks justice and confronts the man, things get crazy, but before the wolverine can kill anyone, a lady shows up and calms the situation, bringing the wolverine out of the bar. Long story short, she has been looking for him for years, sent by her master to return a sword that was given to him by the same master, a long time ago. He rejects the gift and what she says next really hit me. She calls him a Ronin, or a samurai without a master. He had the will of justice within him, but no reason to live, no calling, no purpose. And at the end of the movie, his last response to her as she asks him to stay when all peace is restored was, ” No, i’m a soldier who’s been hiding for far too long.” That’s when I realized that far too often I find myself in ruts of darkness, simply hiding from the war that is going on every second of every day. We cannot hide from our calling, everyday we must wake up and put on the armor of God, and fight the evil that is before us.
