I hope you enjoyed our extended discussion of the movie The Matrix. It is a great example of the fact that the details of a story can be one thing, but the themes and symbols, if you just take the time and think more deeply, can be something else altogether.

(If you haven’t, please consider reading my more comprehensive piece on The Matrix that can be accessed by clicking on the link at the very bottom of the last several newsletters.)

If you think about all the stories you have ever read or watched on screen, there is a wide variety, including differences in the following:

the setting at the very beginning

the activities of the main characters as the story begins, and in their personalities

how these particulars change as the story proceeds

the subplots which arise with secondary characters

and ultimately the truth or moral the story wants to convey, sometimes said outright by one of the characters, but possibly implied.

If we tried to determine just how many different basic plots there may be (and someone has done a very good job of this*), it would be quite a task.

But if I have been able to express myself very well, from the very beginning of this newsletter in the Fall of 2023 – you should know I believe that all of these different stories, and different plots, are truly just . . . one basic story, told over and over and over again.

For you see, if the God of the Bible is truly the very God He says Himself to be, the ever existent One who created all things, this whole universe, and all of humanity, according to His design, that would have to be only true setting or beginning.

And, as it says in Genesis chapters 1-3, if the very first humans then decided they would rather be “in charge,” to rebel, and thought that life would be better if they did; but they could not have been more wrong, and all of humanity has inherited this perverted desire —– how could any other story be more important than this?

The Matrix and many other stories, like The Lord of Rings, focus on the battle that life truly is. The battle with evil, but primarily, the evil that lurks within each of our hearts. If each of us could truly win that battle with God’s help, there would still be evil in the spiritual realm, but our world would be a very different place, would it not?

But our story is not just a story about the war between good and evil, but has always been a love story. Believe it or not, God had always loved us with a covenant love, not dependent on us, not dependent on whether we love Him back, or not. This may just be the most surprising, the most incredible, the most important fact of all of existence. For it is only because of this covenant, this promise, that hope will always remain, regardless of what we do, or not.

Our next story comes from a song, a traditional song, Pretty Fair Maid in the Garden. Since it is in the public domain, we can reprint all the lyrics as they are. My favorite version is Tim O’Brien’s. It can be found on his album Fiddler’s Green.

I hope you listen to this song, more than once. Listen to it and think about the story it tells.

I can’t wait to discuss it further.

Next time.

Sam

*  The Seven Basic Plots, by Christopher Booker, 2004, Bloomsbury, London, England