This month I finished reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Though the story deals with the migration of Okies to the west coast during the first great depression, I couldn’t help but see the obvious parallels to the present. The book revolves around the journey of the Joad family from Oklahoma to Southern California after they are forced from their forty acres because they were unable to pay their mortgage. Sound like anyone you may know or be related to right now? As job losses and foreclosures continue people are once again on the move and willing to work for much less then they would have even 12 months ago.
The book ends with the unforgettable image of a young woman literally nursing a starving man at her breast. Her baby died during labor, the man is dying from a parasite, there is no more food, and so his only chance of survival is milk from the mourning mother of a stillborn child. John Steinbeck’s classic challenges everyone who reads it to care for others even when they’re the one who is down and out; whether you’re bankrupt, grieving, have no place to lay your head, or all of the above. Like the Joad family many of us don’t know what is going on; whether this is a V or W shaped recession, an epidemic or pandemic, or how we’re going to pay for any of it no matter how everything shakes down. The point of The Grapes of Wrath is that we’re in it together. For better or worse, we can’t ever forget that. We’re in it together.
That’s why I’m offering you a sneak preview of 36 Parables’ upcoming short film Together. Based on the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30), Together will be available February 2010 on the 36 Parables Lime DVD.
To watch a Sneak Preview of Together:
1) Follow this link (http://vimeo.com/7334649)
2) Enter the password: 36sneakpreview
Whether your neighbor, brother or sister, mother or father, boss, staff, or volunteers are Wheat or Weeds in your life right now… remember… we’re in it together. Christ’s call to love resonates like thunder through the ages… if you can hear it, you can do it. Together.
Together
This month I finished reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Though the story deals with the migration of Okies to the west coast during the first great depression, I couldn’t help but see the obvious parallels to the present. The book revolves around the journey of the Joad family from Oklahoma to Southern California after they are forced from their forty acres because they were unable to pay their mortgage. Sound like anyone you may know or be related to right now? As job losses and foreclosures continue people are once again on the move and willing to work for much less then they would have even 12 months ago.
The book ends with the unforgettable image of a young woman literally nursing a starving man at her breast. Her baby died during labor, the man is dying from a parasite, there is no more food, and so his only chance of survival is milk from the mourning mother of a stillborn child. John Steinbeck’s classic challenges everyone who reads it to care for others even when they’re the one who is down and out; whether you’re bankrupt, grieving, have no place to lay your head, or all of the above. Like the Joad family many of us don’t know what is going on; whether this is a V or W shaped recession, an epidemic or pandemic, or how we’re going to pay for any of it no matter how everything shakes down. The point of The Grapes of Wrath is that we’re in it together. For better or worse, we can’t ever forget that. We’re in it together.
That’s why I’m offering you a sneak preview of 36 Parables’ upcoming short film Together. Based on the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30), Together will be available February 2010 on the 36 Parables Lime DVD.
To watch a Sneak Preview of Together:
1) Follow this link (http://vimeo.com/7334649)
2) Enter the password: 36sneakpreview
Whether your neighbor, brother or sister, mother or father, boss, staff, or volunteers are Wheat or Weeds in your life right now… remember… we’re in it together. Christ’s call to love resonates like thunder through the ages… if you can hear it, you can do it. Together.