Coming Attractions

Ok I will admit it, I am particular about certain things, call it anal if you wish but particular sounds a bit less obscene. One thing that I happen to be very particular about is movie watching. I like to get to the movies with ample time to select the prime viewing seats and to watch all the previews in their entirety (don’t get me started on the stupid commercials before the previews).

Now previews are an entity that I find quite interesting, a 30 second to 2 minute spot to entice the viewer into shelling out up to $10 to see a movie that might not actually be viewable for up to a year. The preview serves the purpose of creating excitement and desire to watch this movie. Previews are now part of TV also, if my VCR cuts off the last few minutes of Lost (if for some crazy reason there is a life or death situation and I am pulled from my TV on a Wed night) and I miss the preview I will go into a period of mourning because I don’t know what is coming up on the next episode.

The funny thing about previews is that they are always a bit misleading. First you have the preview that shows all the best scenes, so there really isn’t anything worth watching in the 2 hour flick that you haven’t seen in the 2 minute preview. Then there are the previews that make you think the movie is a comedy when in fact it is a horror, or worse the other way around. Misleading previews are the worst. Then there is the preview that has scenes that never make it into the final cut of the movie so you spend the entire time looking for that one scene and realize that it ended up on the cutting room floor.

Now what if our lives had previews? What if every morning for 30 seconds you could get a preview of your day on channel 2? Would you miss that preview? I wouldn’t. Just tell me the time and I would have my alarm set (with a second alarm just in case the first one misfired), bound out of bed, and be waiting for that preview with anticipation.

But think about what our life would be like if we had a preview of our day. Would I decide whether to get back in bed and refuse to let the day occur if I didn’t like what I saw on the preview? And then what about the context, one five second flash of a scene doesn’t give me the whole picture of what will occur, the lead up, the aftermath, the context of what I am seeing. Would I avoid certain things because of what I saw that morning in my preview, would I make choices thinking it will cause a preview I like to come true. How would my life be different if I could see the future, would it cause my future to change because I was so bent on making certain things happen and others to not occur?

So maybe, previews aren’t all their cracked up to be. We make decisions, based on 30 seconds of film, on two minutes of a story, when the whole story really takes 2 hours to tell. Our lives are so much more than that. To decide the outlook of my day, the entire 24 hours of it, based on 30 seconds of material taken out of context.

But isn’t that what we often ask for in life. Just let me know if I am going to get this job, just let me know if I am going to get married, to have children, to have this dream of mine come true. We want those answers, simple and exact as they may be, but we want them out of context. We don’t ask for the cost, we don’t want to know the choices we have to make to get to these answers, or the paths we must walk to arrive at these destinations. We want that instant gratification of knowing what we are most focused on.

What if God gave us those answers, what if He allowed us to see the preview of our lives? Then where would be we be? We would know the answer to that most important question but we would have no context to put it in. Will I marry this guy I’m dating? The preview tells me no, so I break up with him in search of my prince charming but I didn’t see in the preview that it is through my current boyfriend that I meet my future husband. How will I die? I see a fiery plane crash, so I never fly again, but then I miss out on traveling to all the places that I might have visited.

So maybe missing the previews aren’t such a bad thing. Maybe living live without all the answers allows us to really live life, instead of moving from one event to the next.