X-Men 3 is a terrible movie. The first two movies were incredible but, when Bryan Singer left the third movie in Brett Ratner’s incapable hands, things quickly went south. They wasted the Dark Phoenix storyline, the villainous mutants were lame and they had Cyclops unceremoniously killed. Now that 20th Century Fox hired Mark Millar, a former Marvel comics writer, to oversee their Marvel properties, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, hopefully things will get better.
Even though X-Men 3 was awful the scene pictured above was pretty awesome. Spoiler alert, the climax of the movie had Phoenix destroying everything around her. With great effort, Wolverine kept moving towards Phoenix, even with his flesh ripping off, healing and ripping off again. That scene didn’t make the movie bearable but it made those few minutes bearable.
I’d like to have the same tenacity moving towards Jesus as Wolverine did moving towards Phoenix. Even though chunks of his flesh were flying off, Wolverine kept moving towards his goal. Sometimes I have a hard time moving towards Jesus when I don’t get enough sleep.
The nice thing about moving towards Jesus is that he’s not pushing us away or trying to tear our flesh from our bodies. He actually wants us to move towards him and empowers us with his grace and Spirit to do just that. Unfortunately, until Christ returns, we’ll always take some steps back no matter how many steps forward we take. Our goal, then, should be to always take more steps forward than we’re taking back.
Jesus wants more than a stagnant relationship with us. He doesn’t want us to stay where we’re at; he wants us to keep moving towards him. And thankfully for us, we don’t need a healing factor to keep moving towards Jesus, just a little intention and effort.
What helps you keep moving towards Jesus?
I have thought of this seen as a picture of trying to love people unreservedly. The hardest part of loving people is that we can get hurt. God is able to heal our emotional pain, so we are able to keep giving freely while trusting God to “regenerate” us. We can love freely and be hurt deeply and let God heal us continually.