If you look carefully, you can see the Holy Spirit show up in the most curious of circumstances!
If you're not a science-fiction movie buff you likely will be unaware that "Dune: Part Two" will be released in theaters this weekend. It is the long-awaited followup to the box office hit "Dune," which hit theaters three years ago.
In sci-fi circles, it's a big deal. How big? ... Well, consider this: In January, a dying man's last wish was to be able to live long enough to see the sequel come out before he perished. But given the movie's release was scheduled for early March, that was unlikely.
Until ...
Through a series of events that to me can only be described as the Holy Spirit in action, on Jan. 16 an assistant to the movie's director, walked into the dying man's palliative care center with the director's very own laptop that contained an early preview of the movie, complete with French subtitles as the man didn't speak English.
It's the stuff that ... well, movies are made out of.
This remarkable story started in early January when Josee Gagnon, the founder of a Canadian charity called L'Avant, which attempts to fulfill the last wishes of those close to death, put out a call on Facebook looking for anyone who could put her in touch with "Dune: Part Two" director Denis Villeneuve.
As a story in the Washington Post details: "I would like to make some magic for a person at the end of their life,” said the charity’s post. Time was of the essence, the post said, because the person had only “a few more weeks left.” The post did not provide more details about the request — but shortly thereafter, the charity posted that its request had reached Villeneuve."
Initially, the director and his wife, Tanya Lapointe, who is an executive producer of the film, tried to have the man flown to Montreal or Los Angeles to privately see the film, but he was too sick. It was going to have to be done in the man's palliative care center, about 130 miles north of Quebec City.
So, the director and producer made it happen. And on Jan. 16, the dying man, who's name has not been released to protect his privacy, and a friend got to view the newest sci-fi epic before he passed.
Heartbreakingly, the man could not finish the movie, which runs 2 hours and 46 minutes. But he did view about half of it before he stopped because of pain. The man died a few days later, without ever having finished the film.
I know many will see this story as only a series of fortunate events, tied together by serendipity and the power of social media ... a construct of the postmodern, digital age ... so to speak. And I won't convince them differently, of course.
But I read this story, and see the beautiful chain of events that needed to happen for this to take place, and I see proof that our loving God still is very active and present in the world in the form of the Holy Spirit's guiding hands. ... Whereas some would see Lady Luck involved. I fully see the Holy Spirit at work, using the physical tools and people in this world at her disposal.
Now, when I speak of the Holy Spirit in such ways, I often hear a response similar to: "Well, pastor, if you see God's handiwork at play here, why does God waste time and effort on such a trivial matter when there are wars raging around the world, there are children dying of famine and millions of people who are enslaved in the most literal meaning of the word, but also to pain, addiction, jails and poverty?"
Full admission: I don't know. ... I don't know why God intervenes in the matters of some humans, and doesn't in others.
Furthermore, I admit I may be completely blind as to seeing God's interventions in much larger stories at play throughout the world, such as in wars, natural disasters or other tragedies.
But I trust that much of God's divine activity exceeds my finite human understanding. ... And frankly, I've made peace with that.
So, much of the time now, rather than obsess unnecessarily over the much larger construct of the "whys" and "hows" of the greater universe, I focus my attention on the specific instances where I see the Holy Spirit making the improbable happen.
That smaller pursuit of trying to see the Holy Spirit in action in daily events has opened my eyes to details I previously never would have witnessed . And this simple practice has done more to increase my faith than my wondering about the much larger mysteries of the universe ever did!
Blessings to the Holy Spirit for helping a man live out his dying wish! ... It's worth stating the obvious again: God does work in mysterious ways.
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