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This is the Real Faith Podcast where we talk about a movie clip, a scripture, and make an application. We hope these provide encouragement to you. I'm your host Chuck Bower. I hold my undergraduate degree from Johnson University and my master's in historical theology, Christian literature, from Wake Forest University. After a successful church ministry of 28 years, I became a public school teacher currently teaching high school English. We hope you are blessed by these episodes.
Do you think I'd ever go to Sunday school? Puny God. I love you. I know. As you wish Welcome back to Real Faith with Chuck Bower. I really appreciate your positive feedback from the first episode. I really do. Thank you for sharing the news about the podcast and again, the positive feedback. For the month of January, I'll be looking at time, both for the movie clips and scriptures. Last week, I focused on Kung Fu Panda and living for the day because each day is a gift. We must redeem the time.
We must use our time wisely. This week, our clip comes from Interstellar. Interstellar just recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary and was re-released into theaters last November. Currently it's streaming on Netflix. I really enjoy Christopher Nolan films and this is no exception. As an aside, I'm really looking forward to his adaptation of The Odyssey that's supposed to come out next year because that's one of the main texts that we teach freshmen at West Stokes High School.
Back to Interstellar, it has a big star cast. Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Timothy Chamoulet, Michael Caine, among others. It's truly an epic sci-fi film. It clocks in just under three hours in length. Interstellar in a nutshell is a story about a man who must leave his children in order to find an inhabitable planet for the human race due to the Earth's decay.
Our protagonist, Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, makes that painful decision and leaves with his crew on his ship Endurance. There's a lot to explain, so if you've never seen it before, I highly recommend it. It does require your undivided attention. NASA, working in secret, had already sent scientists on solo missions through a wormhole to planets that might be inhabitable for human life.
One of these planets is called Miller's Planet because the scientist Laura Miller landed on it and activated her thumbs up beacon. Again, if a solo scientist found a planet that could support human life, they would activate their beacon. Then Cooper, Matthew McConaughey's crew, would follow up and visit the planets that had the thumbs up beacon. Miller's Planet is orbiting a black hole called Gargantua, and because of that orbit, time is different on Miller's Planet.
Get this, one hour on Miller's Planet is equal to seven years on Earth. There's a nice little Easter egg that Nolan did. If you watch this clip, there's a little tick sound in the background with the music, and it's just over a second, and it repeats. I think it's 1.25 seconds. This little tick repeats. That represents one day on Earth. Again, one hour on Miller's Planet, seven years on Earth. Three of the crew go down to Miller's Planet. It is a water world. It's covered in water.
The mountains they think they see are actually giant tidal waves coming toward them. So Cooper, Matthew McConaughey, Brand, Anne Hathaway, and Doyle, who is played by Wes Bentley of Yellowstone fame, quickly determine that it would be impossible for this planet to sustain life. They try to get Dr. Miller's capsule. Doyle gets swept away.
Their ship gets waterlogged, but they finally escape and arrive back to the Endurance ship where Romilly, played by David Giasi, is waiting, and we get our clip of the week. Hello, Rom. I've waited years. How many years? By now it must be... It's 23 years, four months, eight days. Doyle? I thought I was prepared. I knew the theory. Reality's different. And Miller? There's nothing here for us. Why didn't you sleep? Oh, I had a couple of stretches. I stopped believing you were coming back.
Something seemed wrong about dreaming my life away. I learned what I could from the black hole. But I couldn't send anything near Florida. We've been receiving, but nothing gets out. Is he alive? Oh, yeah. David? We've got years of messages stored. This is just a crushing clip. Romilly patiently waits for 23 years, four months, eight days, as announced by the robot TARS. They were on Miller's planet for a little over three hours, but to Romilly and everyone else on earth, it was over 23 years.
It's crushing to Cooper because his children would now be adults. He missed most of their lives, and that hits him like a ton of bricks. Again, I encourage you to watch this movie when you watch this scene. Cooper, Matthew McConaughey's character, goes right around Romilly because Romilly says you've got video messages stored. So his children send him messages every so often, but he could not send them any because he was on Miller's planet. So he's got 23 years worth of messages.
I dare you to watch the following scene where Cooper is watching these video messages from his kids and not cry like a baby. I mean, it is powerful. It gets me every time. So what's our takeaway? Well, time is fleeting. We know that. We don't have to have somebody tell us that, but that is a theme that we see throughout scripture. Our time is so short here on earth.
Listen to Psalm 39. It's a Psalm of David, and he starts off this Psalm with talking about not wanting to sin with what he says, so he's going to wait. But then he gives us this, again, Psalm 39, verses four through seven. I'm reading from the New Living Translation. He says, Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered, how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand, my entire lifetime is just a moment to you.
At best, each of us is but a breath. We're merely moving shadows and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth not knowing who will spend it. And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you. So David is reflecting and admitting to the Lord how brief his time here is on earth. And we can say the same. Our life is but a breath.
I did a sermon illustration years ago, well, probably decades ago, but you know how time goes, with a jar, some small stones, pebbles, sand, and some water. I think I might have done it on a Sunday evening service. I had the jar and I held it up, think of like a mason jar, a large one, and I poured the small stones in all the way to the top. Next, I pour in the pebbles. And as I'm pouring in the pebbles, I shake the jar so that the pebbles would fill into the cracks created by the small stones.
Fill the jar all the way to the top once again. Then I take the sand, same thing. I pour in the sand. I gently shake the jar as I'm pouring it in so that all the cracks and crevices are filled in with the sand, all the way to the top. The mason jar is packed full. Stones, pebbles, sand. Next, I take the jar again, hold it up, and I pour in some water a little bit at a time, very carefully, and the water fills in everything.
Every space that the stones, pebbles, and finally sand couldn't fill in, the water, of course, finds its way. And I hold that jar up full. Can't get anything else in there. And I ask, what's the lesson learned of this illustration? I think I might have done this at church camp as well. Most of the time, people will say, well, the lesson is that you can always get more in your life. You can always cram more in. If the jar is your life, then you can always fit more in. But that's not it at all.
The lesson is you must start with the big rocks. You have to start with the big rocks, or else it'll just turn into a mess, right? You can't put the big rocks in afterwards. So what are the big rocks in your life? Now we can say the Sunday school answers, the Lord, family, friends, but that really is it, isn't it? Those should be the big rocks in our lives. Have we put those things in places of authority in our lives, because if not, it gets really messy. In the meantime, the clock is flying.
We think we'll get serious about the Lord one day. We'll get serious about our prayer life one day. We'll get serious about our family relationships, spouse, kids, parents, one day. Listen, I've always said we make time for the things that we want to do. And our time here is so short. It's fleeting. Ask parents of high schoolers how fast those middle school years went. Ask parents of college kids how fast those high school years went. They fly. We must be intentional about our time.
We've got to put those big rocks in first. Don't wait. Get the big rocks in first and then add the other things. Our lives pass so quickly. Don't end up like Cooper and miss out on what really matters in life. Put the big rocks in first and keep your hope in the Lord. Thanks for listening this week. I'll see you next week on Real Faith. If you enjoyed this episode of Real Faith, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on future episodes.
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