God made the things you like because you are a thing He likes

(you're not a thing but you know what i mean)

photo source

Close your eyes and think about something you love.

Not a person. Not your Bible. Not even a big thing, like a house or your car or your job or any of the things that jump to mind when they ask what you’re grateful for at Thanksgiving dinner.

I’m talking a small thing, a silly thing. A thing you’ve loved since you were a kid, back when you didn’t think that hard about the things you loved or why you loved them or whether you were supposed to love them. A thing that makes your heart burst wide open when you think about it now (and then feel a little guilty because it isn’t your Bible.)

Let’s go with a favorite film. A favorite childhood film, specifically.

The one you could reenact from beginning to end by heart. The one you still quote with your siblings sometimes.

The one you put on the day after your grandfather died because watching it makes you feel like you did when you were a kid and believed your grandfather would live forever.

The one with that one scene that makes you cry even more now then it did back then.

The one you know all the weird trivia facts about and have at least two subtle tattoos inspired by it and sometimes watch in other languages just to hear what your favorite characters sound like in Spanish or Hungarian.

(Okay, some of those might just be me.)

Did you know God made that for you?

Not the same way He made Orion’s Belt or dandelion seeds, maybe. He went about making this thing in a clever, more roundabout way. He played the long game for you.

First, He made the person who had the idea for the movie. He took His sweet and careful time shaping all the details of this person’s life: all their quirks and hobbies and childhood memories and attachment wounds; all the creatures and sentences and scenes they fell in love with while flipping through the pages of a book or staring at a screen in their grandmother’s living room; all those real and made-up stories they collected like pebbles and stored up in that special place inside themselves, quietly carrying whole libraries around for years and years without even knowing it.

He did all this in just such a way that one day, this person would wake up from a dream or walk their dog down the street or stand in a long line at a grocery store when suddenly BAM there it was: that first whisper of an idea that stopped them in their tracks and gripped their hearts tight, that first baby seedling of a thought that rooted itself deep and then wriggled its way between the shelves where all those stories were waiting.

So eventually this person would have no choice but to find other people — directors and producers and animators and voice actors and score composers and storyboard artists and sound technicians and that one rich old guy who believed in their idea enough to put money behind it — people whose lives God had shaped in just such a way that their own libraries held just the stories this person was looking for.

And once He (God, I mean) got all those people with all those stories together in one room, that’s when the fun part began. Because that’s when He got to help them come up with all the little details of the movie He knew you’d love most:

The color of the hero’s eyes or the number of freckles on your favorite character’s nose.

The iconic villain speech that still makes your skin prickle with goosebumps.

The plot twist you never saw coming.

The redemption arc you saw coming from a mile away and it made you tear up anyway.

That one corny beat of dialogue that gut-punches your dad with laughter every time he hears it.

That part near the end where the light changes or the music swells and even though a bunch of bad and awful things have happened to the characters you love, in that moment your five-year-old heart knew somehow that all of them were going to turn out okay.

The two-minute scene that resonated with you in a way you didn’t even realize the first time you watched it as a little girl and then stayed with you, made its home in a safe and dusty corner of a shelf inside your library where you could glance at it or run your hand along its spine once in a while without peering too hard at its pages, biding its time until the day it sprang from that shelf in such a sudden and shocking way you couldn’t ignore it anymore — and finally, when you took a deep breath and let yourself look more closely, it turned out those two forgettable minutes in a children’s film held all the threads you needed to start untangling years and years of shame and fear and lies your heavy heart had collected like pebbles.

(Okay, that last one is definitely just for me.)

“How kind of God to have this movie made for you,” my therapist once said, and I haven’t been the same since.

I knew God made the birds and the trees and the sky and the lightning bugs and my mom for me. I knew he made the beach me and my cousins all went to growing up and the creek we used to swim in together. I knew he made my best friend and my cats and the Grand Canyon and the sound of wind rustling through leaves on an early summer day.

But my favorite movie? God made that for me, too?

He likes me that much?

He knows me that well?

He delights in the joy I feel over this small and silly thing like a parent delights in the joy their kid feels over Christmas lights or rain puddles or a bubble popping in their palm for the very first time?

He did.

He does.

Always.

God made that small, silly thing you love because you are a small, silly thing He loves even more. No detail of your life is forgettable to Him. There is not one chapter, one frame, one single fluttering thread of your story His fingertips haven’t touched.

Not one.

So next time you sit down to watch your favorite childhood film, try inviting Him to come and watch it with you. Clear a space on the couch and pop an extra bowl of popcorn. Take a moment to look Him in the eyes and tell Him how glad you are He made all the people who made this story He knew you’d love. Press play.

If it doesn’t seem like He’s paying much attention to the movie at first, that’s okay.

He’s probably just watching His kid instead.

a song recommendation

How I See The World by Skye Peterson speaks beautifully to the idea that God loves us through through all the big and little things He made for us. (Thanks Meredith for the rec <3 )

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