The Life of Faith

A couple weeks ago my husband and I rented the movie, The Lake House, in which a man and a woman discover that somehow they are living two years apart in time but that they can communicate through the medium of a mailbox at the lake house. She is living in 2006. He is still back in 2004. OK, don't try to analyze it too much...it's just a movie. Anyway, at the climax of the movie, Sandra Bullock's character reaches out to Keanu Reeves' character and tells him that he will die on Valentine's Day 2004 if he continues on the course he is heading. (Remember, she knows his future because she is in the future.) She tells him what to do to avoid this premature death and that she loves him and will be waiting for him at the mailbox on Valentine's Day in 2006. And of course, the movie ends with their joyful meeting at the mailbox in 2006.

The final scene is shot pretty much from Sandra Bullock's perspective. She puts her warning message in the mailbox, hopes that the man she loves has acted upon it and then he drives up about 30 seconds later and all ends well. But you have to ask yourself, what was Keanu Reeves doing while Sanda Bullock waited those thirty seconds? For him the waiting lasted two years. Did he begin to doubt that he had ever really received messages from the future? Did his friends tell him he was nuts to be waiting for this unseen and pretty much unknowable woman? Did he get lonely and wish he could date women who he could actually see right now? Did he wonder whether she would really be at the assigned place in 2006 after he had given up two years of his life just waiting around?

Essentially Keanu Reeves had to live a life of faith for two years. He had escaped death only to feel like a stranger throughout 2004 and 2005, waiting for his real life to begin in 2006. How did he get through it? Well, presumably he reread her letters a lot. When he began to doubt, he replayed in his mind all the "coincidences" that had happened which could only be evidence that this woman who loved him was waiting for him in the future. He probably also made any major decisions through the filter of "I want to be in this particular place in 2006" and he probably avoided any entanglements that would hinder his relationship with Sandra Bullock reaching its fruition in 2006.

It's actually a pretty good illustration of the life you and I live waiting for unseen and pretty much indescribable realities to occur in the future. Sometimes people think we are crazy; sometimes we ourselves wonder if we are crazy. We sacrifice certain things today because we believe we have something much better waiting for us in the future. We hang on. Patience. Perseverance toward the unseen goal. Believing that what we will surely have later is better than anything we could possibly have now. The life of faith.