For the Love of a Father. For the Love of a Child.

The following is a soon-to-be-posted www.pop-culture.org article:

It is easy to get revved up viewing this Rockyesque, cheering-for-the-underdog Akleelah and the Bee. But I’ve done the underdog thang before (see American Idol).

In an interview on the DVD, I was moved by what Laurence Fishburne (Dr. Larabee) said when he mentioned that this really is a movie about a Father and a daughter. Interestingly and masterfully written, there are actually two separate father-daughter subplots occurring yet intertwined.

You have Dr. Larabee grieving the death of his eight year old daughter to illness. This traumatic experience caused separation between Dr. Larabee and his wife. It caused him to leave his on-campus university work, retreating to his home where he teaches on-line (relationship-free) college courses. He holds on to many of his daughter’s possessions, including her jump rope. He tends his wife’s former garden despite reconciliation not appearing on the radar screen. You have a man who has lost much, is holding on to the pain of the past, is reluctant to begin new deep relationships, and for the most part, because of all of this, has closed himself off from the outside world—a world that could cause him pain once again.

You have Akeelah (Keke Palmer) whose father was innocently shot down on the streets of south Los Angeles. Akeelah’s dad loved the game of scrabble. After his death, she found that the best remedy to stay connected with him and to remember her father was to earnestly grow her gift and her knowledge of words.

Dr. Larabee meet Akeelah. Akeelah meet Dr. Larabee. From this meeting, lives are changed.

For the moment, to have a daughter to love and to be loved by fills a deep hole in Dr. Larabee’s heart. For the moment, to have a father figure to love and to be loved by fills a deep hole in Akeelah’s heart. But in truth, as mortal beings, anything can happen. Pain could begin again in an instant.

But what about that deep hole? Don’t all humans sense a prevalent emptiness inside? There is something missing. We search for many things to fill it; spelling bees, relationships, work, recreation, but they never seem to completely fill this hole.

Could it be that this hole is one that could only be filled by one who could love us forever and whom we could love forever? Could this hole be filled by a relationship with God?

I believe yes to both questions, and the filler of that hole is Jesus Christ.

When time began, man had a perfect, intimate, loving relationship with God. But through a most unfortunate lapse in judgment, man decided to look for something more. This produced disastrous results. The perfect, intimate, loving relationship ended. But from the moment this relationship was severed, it has been God’s mission to make this relationship right again. He too felt a hole in his heart. Jesus came to this world and died for you and me so that this relationship could once again be restored.

Read the following passage from Psalm 139. It describes a relationship between a Father and his child that cannot be matched.

O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
In this relationship, with God the Father, through his son Jesus Christ, that hole can be filled. Nothing can destroy this relationship, not even death on this earth. You can have the assurance that he’d never leave you. You can have the assurance that he knows you better than you may know yourself. You can have that hole filled with a Father you could forever love. He filled the crevice in my heart. By faith, I know he desires to fill the crevice in your heart.

In Akeelah and the Bee, you get glimpses of restored relationship and they are wonderful—but alas temporary. However, a relationship with the God the Father would not be a glimpse. It would be everlasting. If you are willing to take a chance, he would love to have that forever relationship with you. Be assured that he wants that forever relationship with you. This is clearly evident in the chance he took for you, sending his one and only son, Jesus, so that he and you could have that Father-child relationship.

Father meet _________ (fill in your name). _________ (fill in your name) meet the Father. May lives be forever changed.