I had to write some thoughts about a movie I watched with the family last night. It was called “The Martian Child,” and it was about a man who was widowed and decided to adopt. A social worker at a children’s home matched him with a young boy who told everyone he was from Mars. He stayed inside a box all of the time, refused to get in the sun, and believed that if he released “Martian wishes” they would come true. He was incredibly intelligent and imaginative. The man balks at first but keeps feeling this compulsion to bring the child in. What is interesting is that the man was a science fiction writer and so he deeply appreciated the child’s imagination. The man goes through several trying times where the child steals things in the name of ‘his mission to study Earth’ and the whole child placement system is against them. The man teaches the boy how to play baseball and teaches him some very great lessons and they begin to become attached to each other. The boy then decides it is time to go back home to Mars and he steals away at night to climb to the top of an observatory so that his people can pick him up. The man climbs to the top, and as they are hanging on to the top of this round dome, almost falling from the wind, with the police and emergency crews coming in the boy finally breaks down and begins to ask why his parents abandoned him. The man begins to shout out that they must have been very stupid beings because even an “unintelligent earthling” could see the wonder and imagination and beauty in the boy. The boy sits there crying for the first time in the whole movie and then he jumps into the man’s arms and they embrace. The boy realized love. For the first time in his life he wasn’t rejected anymore, but he was loved just as he was. As I watched this unfold I knew I was watching a picture of the Father. He sees the wonder and imagination and love and goodness in us because He put it there. The people and the things that we put our hope in to make our lives significant and meaningful have abandoned us. God hasn’t abandoned us, but the things that we just knew were better than He was have abandoned us. We make up stories and believe lies that help protect us and keep the hurt out. Then the Father reaches out to us and tells us who we really are, but we can’t believe that. Sounds like weirdness to us, so we cry out for our “real parents, our real loves” to come back. Finally we see our plight and the Father is still there with open arms wanting us desperately to come back to Him so He can show us and tell us who He made us to really be. We have a choice to make whether we step into the arms of Love and Compassion and Understanding and Wisdom and Grace, or we sit on the top of a cold metal building waiting for something or someone that doesn’t really exist to come and help us. I know that this “unintelligent earthling” must make the decision to step into His arms. I pray that you will join me there.