"Just"

So I think I have a new favorite quote from a movie…actually I have liked it for awhile now, ever since I saw the movie for the first time, but I’ve been thinking about it for awhile now…

In Finding Neverland (an AMAZING movie), young Peter tells Mr. Barrie that his dog wasn’t anything incredibly special, that he is “just” a dog. Mr. Barrie responds with:

“just a dog?! Porthos [the dog] dreams of being a bear and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he is just a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That’s like saying ‘he can’t climb that mountain, he’s just a man,’ or ‘that’s not a diamond, it’s just a rock.’ Just.”

What an incredible statement, and how profoundly true it is. I’ve been challenged lately that this is how we approach God. When we pray we often lace our prayers with “God if you could just be with us…if you could just heal him…if you could just hear us…” “Just.” Those things we are asking for, and the God of the universe who we are asking are HUGE things, not things to be prefaced with “just”—like Mr. Barrie says “what a horrible, candle-snuffing word!” We serve a HUGE God, a God who loves us and literally died to pave the way to His throne so that we might approach Him with confidence. We talked some on our Presbyterian retreat in February about how we seem to have a much smaller view of God—we don’t ask Him for the big things, we don’t boldly approach Him. Instead we tentatively creep up to Him and ask him to “just” hear our prayer—as if we are ashamed or fearful that we are somehow bothering him. Learning how to pray with boldness and confidence is difficult—I often feel like God has better things to do than to hear my prayers for my friends, myself, or my family, yet scripture tells us the opposite—He can’t wait for us to come before Him! May we all continue to work on eliminating “just” from our vocabulary and approach God’s throne with confidence and joy!