Another Friday, at the end of a long, tiring, work week. It was pure joy just to be finally able to say “it’s Friday.”
As it was Friday, there was chapel, so we all filled into the gymnasium to take our seats, record absences, and settle in for whatever was to follow. Today it was a video, called ‘The Butterfly Circus.’
The video starts out with epic music (by British born, Canadian resident, Timothy Williams), the sort of score that makes you heart leap and fall as it enters your senses. It is a beautiful score that makes you want to keep watching.
This short (twenty minutes) movie is set during the Great Depression, when the external circumstances of the lives of most people cause feelings of hopelessness. This movie is not about hopelessness, but of hope. The hope is unleashed by the Butterfly Circus, a circus that does entertainment differently, with no side shows of the unusual, un-normal, and untouchable. It is a circus that, like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, is about the internal change to a state of beauty, hope and redemption.
The line in the movie, that stays with you when it is over, is said by the circus ringmaster, Mendez, “The greater the struggle the more glorious the triumph.” He says this to Will (Nick Vujicic), a man with no arms and no legs. For me, though, the most poignant line came just prior to it, when Mendez repeats the line Will’s previous ringmaster said that first introduced the two, “but you, cursed from birth. A man, if you can call him that, who God himself turned his back on.” Then Will yells back, “Stop it, why would you say that?” And Mendez responds, “because you, believe it.” And tears fell, with abandon, down my cheeks.
What lines do we hear in our heads? More specifically, what LIES do we hear in our heads? The things that we have heard all of our lives, and, we believe them. Things like:
“you are ugly”
“you are fat”
“you can’t …”
“you are stupid”
“you are hopeless”
These lines, these lies become self-fulfilling prophesies. They set the course for our lives. Not because they are said to us, but because we believe them. And because we believe them, we avoid resting in our cocoon, to await the oncoming transformative process that allows us to be re-born into the body, into the life that was always intended for us.
Let me share a few lines of TRUTH, to counter the lies:
“you are justified (made good)” (Romans 5:1)
“you are redeemed and forgiven” (Colossians 1:13-14)
“you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:25)
“you are chosen by God and precious to him” (1 Peter 2:5)
“you are a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9)
“you are God’s special possession” (1 Peter2:9)
“you are blameless before God” (Ephesians 1:4)
“you are free” (Galatians 5:1)
And I say all this (truth) to you, hoping that you (and I) will believe it.
“So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
what is old has passed away–look,
what is new has come”
itsawonderfilledlife 