I think I know people whose lives are one serious wrestle day after day after day. They get tired! They're physically, emotionally and otherwise worn down and nearly worn out. It isn't something that a good eight-hour sleep will cure (though, God knows, if they could get one of those they'd think it was halfway to Paradise). They've tried all the little social and mental tricks to ease the brain. They're read with deep irritation silly books that tell them every problem in life is part of "the small stuff" that they aren't to sweat and they fling it against the wall in justified impatience. Nonsense books like that are written for people whose lives need nothing more than fine-tuning to make them heavenly. For the really troubled they're a sharp stick in the eye.
In the movie Mr. Udhall is a man with serious problems (pleasantly made to look funny in the movie) of the compulsive behavioural kind. Beneath his rudeness, self-centredness and sheerly insulting behaviour is someone who wishes he was free and at peace like so many others around him. Because of his inner turmoil he resents the harmony in their lives and so, when he can, he makes them pay dearly for the good fortune. This further isolates him and screws the coffin lid a bit tighter down on him.
But he's demented and sometimes his excessive ordering of his ways doesn't help and his pain makes him scream out for help. He bursts into the doctor's office and is promptly told to leave without consultation and as he leaves through the crowded waiting room he looks at the people lining the walls. Their needs are written all over their faces and in their body language as they lounge dispiritedly. He says to them, "What if this is as good as it gets?"
Whatever the shortcomings of the movie it is truly worth watching. For Udhall things take a lovely turn. I have no wise pieces of advice for people who live with the screws tightening on their hearts but I have heard Someone say that if we give our lives to him that life as it now is not as good as it gets! He says he came to give us life to the full (John 10:10) and he never lies. (If you'd like to give your life to Christ, contact me, please. holywoodjk@aol.com
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.