The Help, Race, Heaven and Football

Okay, I usually like movies that inspire me to do great things.  Gladiator, The Patriot, The Incredibles, you get the picture.

So I watched The Help tonight, since we got it for my mom for Christmas.  I have to admit, I really wanted to watch the Packers game, but I was the solo voice there.

Thanks to being the minority, I now have two new heroes, Skeeter, and Sister Clark.  Real?  No.  Inspiring?  Yes.  And I still caught the end of the game.

Even though I went to a mostly white elementary and middle school, I grew up colorblind.  I don’t mean I can’t tell the difference between colors, but that I never really noticed the differences in people as much, or the tensions that may have been there at times.

Part of this is on account of my parents, back to my mom’s mom, our family just didn’t make distinctions much at all.  Dad was an All-American basketball player on a predominately black team.  Gran served food to folks from the other side of the tracks in her southern home back in the 50’s.  I grew up living in a home where we were all friends, all playmates, all church members, all teammates.

Another part was football.  It never really donned on me that many of my friends grew up with very different backgrounds, churches, families, and friends than me- until sometime in the middle of college.  When you fight for, pray, celebrate, and shed tears with people, those differences don’t go away, they just don’t seem that significant- so I guess for me, they never really were much.

Christmas is when we celebrate that Jesus came into the world, one of those things was to break down walls of separation, to make one new humanity through the cross.  Jesus died an enemy’s death so that we could live together in peace.  My heart is saying “Amen” (think black church) and singing the doxology (think white church) all at the same time in one beautiful collision of Paul’s vision in Ephesians chapter 2 being fleshed out on the screen.

A picture of heaven in a game, and a movie that shows the work to make heaven a greater reality on earth.

Football & The Help.