More than meets the eye.

You may say what you want, but I enjoy the Transformers movies. All three of them in fact. I may not agree with the choice of characters (both of the female leads) nor some of the actions contained within the movies (especially the unnecessarily gratuitous amount of sexual innuendos in the second film), but they do entertain me and cause me to think. It doesn't hurt that they scratch a nostalgic itch as well... I could probably say something about each of the films, but I most recently watched the third movie so that is what I will speak from (I'll try my best to avoid all spoilers for those who have not seen the films and would still like to).

So, how to set this up without ruining it for anyone. As you could guess if you've seen any of the movies, the Autobots (the good guys) and the Decepticons (the bad guys) are once again at war on Earth. One thing leads to another and things aren't looking so good for the humans. In their desperation, they make a decision concerning the Autobots. Optimus Prime (the leader of the Autobots) knows the humans made the wrong decision, but he follows it anyway.

I think God does this with us sometimes. When we're angry or confused, we often make decisions, decisions that are terrible for us. And God (in His love for us) lets us make those choices. He steps back and lets us decide. It sometimes seems strange that this can be true. If He loved us, He would protect us, right? First of all, to not do this would take away our free will, thereby jeopardizing a loving relationship with us. But, there is a second reason as well.

Unfortunately (as I've been learning a lot lately), sometimes loving us means letting us make the wrong decision. We need to see that, contrary to our belief, we don't know what's best for us. We learn from mistakes and from heart ache. Indeed, the school of hard knocks is the oldest in existence and (arguably) has the highest learning rate out there.

The important part of it all is this: once we've learned our lesson, we discover God never really left us. He watched us make the bad choice, but He never abandoned us and, when we ask for help, He's more than willing to throw His limitless power behind us. Could we ask for a greater God?

If you want to see the clip I'm talking about, you can find it here. The particular part I'm referring to starts around the 1:45 mark.