Crazy Day at the Movies

So... if you have visited my site much in the last 6 months or so you may have noticed that I have supported Mel Gibson's new movie from day one. I saw the movie opening weekend and was amazed just like most people who have seen it. Well, today something interesting happened. Call it what you will but I am going to call it interference from the Devil.

"The Passion of the Christ" opened here in England this weekend. It wasn't quite as big here as it was in the US. There was a longer line for "Looney Toons" than for "The Passion" if that tells you anything. If any of you went to see the movie opening weekend in the states like I did you know that the lines were crazy and many shows were sold out days in advance. Not the case here... of course I don't think it was all over the news like it was in the states... not really sure though cause I don't get British TV. I could... but I would have to pay almost 250 dollars a year in tax just to recieve there signal... then pay for the service. That's another story I'll go into later.

Anyway, the last two weeks I have been making plans for the single enlisted population here at my base to go see this movie. I coordinated with the base chapel so all who went on this trip to see "The Passion" would only have to pay 1 pound (roughly $1.85) and the chapel would pick up the rest. I also made sure we had transportation to and fro and purchased all the tickets. All in all 13 people signed up to go.

Everything is going fine, besides the little mix up when I was picking up the tickets because they had reserved my seats for the wrong movie. And if any of you have ever been to England you know that customer service over here sucks... but they did get it sorted out and every thing was fine. We went inside our cinema and after like 30 minutes of commercials and previews the movie finally started. There were a couple other big groups of people in the cinema but it was no where near to being full. When the movie finally started it played for 15 minutes and got just about to the part when the Roman soldier gets his ear practically cut off in the garden where Judas betrays Jesus and the film quit. Some how the film itself had been torn. Now, I know this happens from time to time but it typically doesn't happen to movies on opening weekends. The only other time I have seen it happen was in my hometown theater and that place was a dump at the time and the movie they were showing was had been in theaters for months.

So the manager of the theater comes in and says it will be fixed in about 5 minutes and we will get free passes for the next time we come. Thirty minutes go by and he comes back in and says they won't be able to show us the movie because they can't get it fixed so they are going to give us our money back and give as free movie pass. So... we left and my little outreach went nowhere. I am going to try and reschedule it and I hope this will actually give more people a chance to go.

Just one more thing. Paul says in Romans that, "If God is for us than who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31b). God will use this little mishap for His glory, you just wait an see.