Today we are continuing our theme of the month Oc•Tim•Bur with the movie Beetlejuice.
In this movie, you meet a young couple about to take a vacation, and they meet with tragedy. They have died and didn’t realize it for a bit. They discover a book in their house called the “Handbook for the Recently Deceased,” which seems very unhelpful. And they continue on with their lives… Ish. See, they had an issue.
They didn’t realize they were dead and not admitting that they had a problem. And this became even clearer when a family bought their house and began to remodel and do things that they didn’t like! They looked to the handbook, they went and had a meeting with their caseworker… And nothing was working. Because they weren’t doing what needed to happen. What needed to happen was that they needed to have a conversation with this family and figure out things. Instead, they decided to call on Beetlejuice to “fix their problems” only to realize that they now had… Bigger problems.
Sometimes when we face situations where we know what we should do, but it’s not something we really want to do, we try to put on a spiritual or situational band-aid.
The dictionary says that Band-aid means “Able to help or improve something only for a short period of time” (Merriam-Webster, 2016).
We fix these issues for a short time period, but it doesn’t fix them totally. The only thing that can fix these issues totally is following your handbook. Not the handbook for the recently deceased but The Bible. And the Bible even tells us this. The scriptures also tell us to listen to the wisdom of other believers who are following what God’s telling them.
Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.
Proverbs 19:20 ESV
We’ve said this before that reading your Bible and listening to godly counsel is important. But it really can’t be stressed enough just how important this is. Don’t put a band-aid on things God wants to heal.
Question of the week.
What is your favorite spooky movie?