E.T. Phone Home

I was recently pondering the words of Jeremiah 33:3, where God tells him to "call to me and I will answer you". As I thought about this passage, an interesting thought crossed my mind and I was drawn back in time just over 25 years. I wish I could say I was drawn back to my childhood, but I supposed that would be stretching things just a bit. Anyway, I thought about the move E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and realized that the script could have been written entirely around Jeremiah 33:3. In my musings I came to the conclusion that this was a prophetic motion picture (it was even released on June 11 - 6 is the number of man and 11 is the number of the prophetic).

I won't go into all of what I saw here. If you are a part of the church I pastor, then you have heard it all already anyway. If you are not, then you can check out the media player at the bottom of the page and listen to the message I preached on it. I do, however, want to speak to the issue briefly. The entire concept of extra-terrestrials is overrated. I mean after all, we ourselves are extra-terrestrials (extra meaning beyond and terrestrial meaning this earth). We are strangers and aliens according to 1 Peter 2:11 and thereby we are something not of this world. Just like E.T. we don't belong to this earth, however, we differ from E.T. in one important way.

The tag line for the movie E.T. proclaimed, "He is afraid. He is alone. He is 3 million light years from home." E.T. spent the entire movie trying to figure out how to call home and get help. The difference shows up right here. As christians we have come to think of ourselves as being 3 million light years from home. Heaven has become a concept of something we will one day attain in the sweet by and by that will arrive somewhere out there in the future. According to the Word of God, this couldn't be farther from the truth. Jesus himself taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Our home is not light years away, because we merely have to cry out and bring it into existence in the earth around us. E.T. took the limited resourcs he had in an alien environment and focused all of his attention on contacting home. We too must begin to long for home - for a relationship with our Father - and call out to find it. When we do we will find that God is standing by, anxiously awaiting our call and that he desires to answer. Jeremiah 33:3 (Message) goes on to say, "I'll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own". This is what I want. I want to call out to my Heavenly Father, bring the plans of Heaven into existence in the earth right now and learn all about those marvelous and wondrous things that I could never have figured out on my own.