On Sunday, we started a new Sunday School class, John Bevere’s Extraordinary. Eric and I have done several other studies from him and found them to be challenging and thought-provoking.
This week he was introducing the concept of living extraordinary lives and used movies as an illustration. Something like 70% of the blockbusters of all time have heroic, extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. But as I thought about some of the movies he highlighted, it got me thinking.
Lion, Witch & the Wardrobe. Spiderman. Superman. The list was much longer. But the first half of the list contained movies like these. But were the heroes really extraordinary?
Or is the power that they were ordinary people presented with extraordinary challenges and circumstances who pushed past their fears and weaknesses to rise to the occasion. Lucy Pevensie extraordinary? She was what nine-years-old when she pushed through the wardrobe. Peter Parker was a geeky kid who didn’t fit in anywhere. Then he has a spider bite that gives him powers he never wanted and fights the whole series. Yet, he rises to the occasion to use them for good.
That’s the power of these movies.
They give us hope that we, too, can rise to the occasion when called upon.
And that’s what attracts me to World War II. A generation of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary times who rose to the occasion. Who do you think of as an ordinary person who rose to confront extraordinary circumstances?