I love action flicks. If a movie’s got “high octane” in its tagline, there’s a 95% chance I’ll want to see it. If you had asked me as a kid, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”-  three words would have sprung to mind: Bond. James Bond. (Princess Lea would probably have been a close second.)  Bond, Star Wars and Raiders…these are the movies of my childhood.  Twenty (ok, maybe more) years on, add in LOTR, The Matrix, the Marvel and DC action comics, any movie with Tom Cruise in it…outside of his brief “serious actor” phase.

“what do you want to be when you grow up?”-  three words would have sprung to mind: Bond. James Bond.

So other than the blazing guns, bloody fist fights and occasional bad language…what exactly is the appeal you ask? Well, as the parent of an 11 year old boy, I’ve had to give some serious thought to that. Obviously those three aspects are an immediate guarantee of his interest…but at the end of the day, we both crave and are counting on the same thing: the goodie beats the baddie.

 

You know that ultimate battle scene, where the bruised and bloodied heroes are on the edge of defeat, until Aragorn / Morpheus / Captain America gives a rousing speech and you see the glint of victory come back alive in their eyes… That’s the moment I love more than anything else, when their heroism sings truest in that split second before victory is assured.

 

Ahhh, but all these movies also share a pitfall, and it comes about 30 seconds after the final credit has rolled, and I am left in the flat silence of…reality. I do a mental 360 and assess the absolute lack of heroism and drama in my life. “I would be a decent hero…if I had the chance,” I think to myself very quietly, for it sounds absurdly vainglorious even in the quiet of my mind. But the thought is there…felt and frustrated. Where is the passion and worthiness of countless loads of laundry, harassed outings in the grocery store, endless car mileage covered in the confines of South Co Dublin, the same old arguments rehashed time and again with the same people… Where are my glorious battles??

 

And then God answers…

 

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.” 2 Cor. 10:3,4

 

” Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts.” Zech. 4:6

 

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” 1 Cor. 10:31

 

And I am reminded; the battles are all around, in everything I do.  When I despair about the lack of glory, I am playing straight into the deceiver’s hands…because I have missed out on the opportunity to glory in God – in eating, in drinking, in laundry, in shopping, in arguing…even in despair.

 

Everyday battles.

 

 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters” Col 3:23