Those words really make you pause and think. What will you do?
I finally watched the new Star Wars movie (consider yourself warned for spoilers, but as I am the last person on earth to watch it I doubt any one will be devastated). It finally made it to the theater in our lovely Podunk town. When I was a teenager and reading Hamlet, I was rather saddened when everyone died, not understanding the whole concept of a tragedy but later reconciling myself to the fact and learning to love the great one liners and wonderful morbidness of the tale. I went in assuming this one was Hamlet in a galaxy far far away and was not disappointed. I actually liked it better than episode VII, maybe because my head wasn't spinning, wondering what had happened in the galaxy since the last movie; I felt very much as if I had walked into a parallel universe (thanks Star Trek!) with plot holes big enough to fly a Star Destroyer through, but that is entirely another matter. You had to assume everyone pretty much gets annihilated since they aren't in the next movie, but even so, I really liked the characters and watching the destructive capabilities of the Death Star from the ground level is rather chilling (and this is only the low setting?!). A 'disturbance' in the Force, really? Talk about understatement!
Anywho, there are not many movies where you actually get to see the answer to the question above. Most movies you are either so overwhelmed with action/destruction that you are left chilled, cold, and dead inside or they end happily ever after. Very few actually let you contemplate what happens in that irredeemable moment when all is lost. And this movie did it well. Very well. In our society of the quest for immortal youth we are completely oblivious to death and the end of the world (save as a plot for an action movie). But what happens when it comes and you aren't ready? What happens when you are sitting there and suddenly realize it is over and your only accomplishment in life is breaking your own record at Angry Birds? In this movie, the characters were ready, they pretty much assumed it was over the moment they volunteered for the mission and died doing something vital for the survival of freedom and justice in the galaxy though they wouldn't live to see it. But then there was the guy who built the thing and it destroyed him, tragic and ironic and horrible. Strange that we can find peace with one death but are astonished and appalled by another in the same circumstances.
The opening quotation comes from the very end of Chapter 5 of the Book of Jeremiah, the whole chapter tells of the injustice and evil of God's chosen people and the prophesied disaster that will soon overwhelm them. Before those chilling words, it tells of how things are as they like it and they will not be thwarted in their desires, little believing God will fulfill His word. I cannot help but think that they felt very much like the designer of the Death Star when his own creation annihilated him. What of each of us? It may not be the end of the world in our case, but death certainly will one day have its due. Can we be easy and at peace when that fell specter comes for us? Or will we watch in wide eyed horror as everything we once thought to be so vital and important turns to ash and nothing about us, finally realizing what it is we should have done with out lives?
And what is this vital thing? What can keep us from despair at the end of all things, as Sam Gamgee might say?:
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."
What will you do when the end comes?
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