Cinema legend Ridley Scott has directed several iconic film masterpieces including Gladiator, Blade Runner and its more recent follow up Blade Runner 2049, Napoleon to name but a few. His latest offering to hit the big screen is The Dog Stars. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which a virus has wiped out most of humanity. The protagonist is Hig, a pilot who survived the flu that killed everyone he knew, his wife included. He lives in the hangar of a small, abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper. Hig sometimes heads off in his 1956 Cessna, where he can fish and pretend things are how they used to be. When a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life might exist if he flies a bit further…’
I read an article by Jacob Elordi (who plays Hig) this week:
The 29 year old says he resonates with his character’s struggle to be content with life. “Everything is sweet for us – we’re able to walk around on the street, go to the shops, go to the park, have dinner with each other and we still go to bed and think ‘What else is there? What am I missing …?’
Blaise Pascal, the 17th century philosopher recognized that human beings are missing something which ‘things’ just cannot fill.
‘… since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.’
This is often quoted as ‘the God-shaped hole’. It’s the idea, that we saw illustrated in the Parable of The Rich Fool, that tangible and less tangible wealth like health, relationships etc can never give us the security we need. Only Jesus can bring us true fulfillment, peace and hope for the future. When by faith we come into a relationship with Him, we find that we can experience how life should be. Life in all its fullness.
In Jesus we find what we’ve been missing.
‘I came that they might have life and have it abundantly’.
John 10.10 NRSV