"We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down!”
Have you ever heard of Richard Marquand?
He directed a little movie called Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and he died at the ripe old age of 49.
Imagine that – you get the biggest break of your career, directing a Star Wars movie and you’re six feet under a dozen months later.
“We must learn to act the play out.”
We live inside a story, a story being told by God, and although, thanks to the Bible, we know the story’s ultimate end, we don’t know how our story will end. Yet, how much grief and unhappiness we bring upon ourselves and others trying to guess the ending – or worse, believing we know the ending!
We lie awake all night plotting out a difficult conversation, “If I say this, then she’ll say this. Then I’ll really give her a piece of my mind!”
Or we pour over the news, trying to divine which way the election is going.
Or we study the latest economic numbers, hunting for signs of Bulls or Bears.
We consult the stars, our palms, tea leaves, tarot cards, bones, entrails, all kinds of things because we are desperate to know how our story ends.
Because life is very suspenseful.
It hangs, after all, by a thread.
But Betsy Trotwood is not alone in her condemnation of dwelling on the end of the story. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote;
“We must learn to act the play out.”
Leave it to Charles Dickens to hide a big truth in a little sentence.
Play your part, trust the Author, and be prepared for a twist ending!
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
“We must learn to act the play out.”
Leave it to Charles Dickens to hide a big truth in a little sentence.
Play your part, trust the Author, and be prepared for a twist ending!