Not long ago two of my friends were talking about the new season on Dangerous Catch. For those uninformed, the show chronicles the lives of the crab fishermen during the fishing season in the Bering Sea. Crab fishing has long been considered the deadliest occupation, hence the name of the show. My friends were not talking about the danger or the catch but rather about the men and captains who would be back and what they were like etc. It was almost a soap opera, Deadliest Catch a soap, go figure. That is the key to the success of a show, the lives of the characters. With reality TV real characters have lives in view of millions each week. Survivor, Big Brother, The Bachelor, Ice Road Truckers and a new one (for me) Swamp People are about interpersonal relationships, drama. You might think that day to day drama would be enough but no, we hurry home to see more on television. People and their stories are entertainment for others. Real life is always more incredible than fiction and more important.
Donald Miller the author of Blue Like Jazz and other books spoke some years ago at a conference I attended. He told in a very funny way of how we look at life as if it is a movie we star in. We have two cameras we call eyes and the story is about me. I am the star. You thought you were the star but no it is I who stars. You, I am sorry to inform are a bit player in my movie called life. That’s how we roll through life. Everything we do is so important. Everything we say is amazing. Every decision is life and death, our drama.
Cosmic drama is playing out in the media and Washington these days as they talk about reducing the budget deficit by 4 trillion dollars. What does 4 trillion mean? Let’s compare, In cosmic terms light travels 5.8 trillion miles in one year ie, one light year. That is 186,000 miles per second or eight minutes to get from the surface of the sun (93 million miles away) to this planet. Light is fast. I am not. The universe is so big that we use light years 5.88 trillion miles to measure distances. The closest star is 4 light years away. The farthest galaxy observed is estimated to be 13-15 billion light years away. The galaxy we are a part of is one of billions of galaxies and our star is one of billions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is estimated to be 100,000 light years across and our star 25,000 light years from the center. It is turning and the entire 360 degree rotation takes 250 million years. Our planet is one of 7 in our solar system (Pluto was demoted recently from planet status) with a diameter of 8, 000 miles and 6 billion human inhabitants. The cosmos are very,very, BIG. That leaves my head spinning and feeling very, very, small. You too? Wait there’s more Louie Giglio writes, “You are a galactic nobody—in fact 99.99999999999999999999999999999999 percent of the people on earth have never heard of you. But God knows about you and calls you His own.” (P. 52 i am not but I know I AM). Now that’s DRAMA!
WOW the one who is bigger than the universe, older than time, faster than light knows about me and calls me by name even though I am very, very, small! I’m not even in the movie when I consider how small I am in the cosmic drama and how BIG is GOD. You know maybe what I think is so important and dramatic is not so important of the larger stage. Maybe the drama I make is really nothing. Maybe how people treat me is really nothing in the movie called the cosmos. Maybe I am not as important as I want to think I am. Louie Giglio continues,
“What more could we possibly achieve on earth that is greater than what we already have? We are already friends of God. What greater prize or position could we hope to gain? What praise of men could eclipse the voice of I AM speaking to us by name?" p.53
Really, what other drama compares? What matches up with the knowledge that God who is bigger than the universe knows my name, my heart and my life and still chose to humble himself as a man so that I, the smallest of the small, could be in relationship with him the bigger of the BIG.Now that’s drama.
That’s reality and NOT TV.
BroG
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