Daily Encouragement: Day 256

From Handbook to Wisdom, Day 256

THERE IS MORE TO LIFE
THAN MEETS THE EYE

The hour is coming and now is,
when true worshipers will worship the Father
in spirit and truth,
for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
God is spirit, and those who worship Him
must worship in spirit and truth.
(John 4:23–24)

He who believes in You, as the Scripture has said,
rivers of living water will flow from within him,
because Your Spirit indwells him.
(John 7:38–39)

In the popular (and oft-cited) science-fiction movie The Matrix, Keanu Reeves plays an ordinary man who is not ordinary at all. But then, everything that seems ordinary turns out not to be real. Reeves’s character, called Neo—a tip-off that he is the first of a new kind of man—learns that his whole world is actually a “virtual reality” illusion called “the Matrix” that was created by alien machines that have taken over the Earth. He and the rest of humanity have been living a lie. At first, the truth is very hard to accept, and Neo finds it difficult to make the transition from the “virtual” world to the “real” world.

The Matrix is a thought-provoking film on many levels. There is, however, one way to ruin it entirely, and that is to take it too seriously. Like much science fiction, The Matrix is best understood as a parable. At its heart, the film provokes the viewer to consider the possibility that reality is larger than the familiar material world that we experience through our five senses. There is more to life than meets the eye, but this does not mean that all is illusion.