Published With Thanksgiving

John 3:30

It’s an awful moment when you realize that the hero, the main character in the drama isn’t you. I thought that type of moment was going to take center stage in the movie The Matrix. At one point, Neo, who we’ve been led to believe is the hero, the main character, the chosen one, goes to see the Oracle—a woman who can see who a person truly is, the one who can tell us if Neo is, in fact, the one. Surprisingly, at this moment, she says to the expected-hero, “Nope, sorry, you’re not him.” And while the movie doesn’t play out the way I’d hoped it might, it got me thinking about when that moment came in my own life.

Maybe it was from reading too many comic books and myths, but I always wanted to be the hero. I kept hoping that one day the great quest would fall into my hands or that, in a moment of crisis, I’d know that my moment had come and I could step forward to be who I was born to be. I got used to thinking of myself as someone special.

For me, the awful moment didn’t come in one scene. No prophetess looked me in the eye and told me that I wasn’t the golden boy anymore. No, I guess, for me, it was more like John’s story—one day I looked up, noticed that something had changed, and realized that I was on the decrease. The story was no longer going to follow my adventures.

Reading John’s speech, he sounds so content. He sounds like a man who’s accepted his role. He sounds almost joyful. How he did that I have no idea; because, I’m not ready to decrease. And when I look around at work and realize that someone else occupies the role of departmental hero—the one who learns so fast, gets things done so quickly, is the “golden boy” who can (as I once seemed to) do no wrong, I cannot look with joy upon their increase.

I suppose there’s a lesson in all this about being grateful with whatever role I have to play. The story, after all, is not about me but about Christ. Maybe John got that and that’s why he was able to get out of the way and not mope and lament that everyone who used to crowd around him with that look in their eyes were now hanging around someone else. Perhaps I just need to get over my own childhood dreams of being Frodo or Harry Potter or Spider-Man and accept my place in the background as a bit player in the greater story that God is telling.

Or maybe I’m being taught that heroics aren’t like the movies portray them. Because, it feels like, saying what John said, accepting that awful moment with such grace, may have taken a hero.

Help me to accept myself, my role whatever it may be in serving you.