So, I bet you can guess what movie I’m watching. Let me just say, I’ve loved this film ever since I was a very little girl. This past year, I lived with someone who was raised in a very strict, religious household. I, on the other hand was raised in a house that was completely without religion. Knowing this, she was very caught off guard the day that she came home to find our other three roommates and myself watching this movie after we all finished our homework. Now, living with art and music nerds respectively, we were all engaged in deep conversations about the incredible artwork and the score within the film when she entered the room. She was absolutely shocked to find out that we all had seen the movie, most specifically those of us who grew up without Western religion in our lives.
Now, just about everybody knows the story of Moses, religious or not, not to mention it’s absolute A-List cast, so there’s a good base as to how my family encountered this film. But, when I was a little girl, I was completely obsessed with Egyptian lore and history. I used to want to be an archeologist, like before I learned that King Tut’s tomb had already been discovered a long, long time ago, I was 100% convinced that I would be the one to find it. So, it’s needless to say that an animated film that took place in ancient Egypt was something that got little me really excited. Although, the plagues scared me quite a bit (hello, first-born here!), The Prince of Egypt is very close to my heart, I even wrote a narrative for standardized testing one year that was from the perspective of a Hebrew mother attempting to protect her newborn baby boy from the Egyptian soldiers. So, when I was young, I watched this movie for my love of Egypt.
Now, this film is still just as close to my heart, if not closer, now that I am a Christian. I knew all the little easter eggs like the way that the murals depict the Egyptian “god” Aten, but I never understood what that burning bush meant when he said, “I am that I am.” I’m not sure that I will ever be able to describe the excitement I felt when I got to watch this movie that time with my roommates. It was the very first time I had ever watched this movie with a Christian lense, and let me tell you, it was awesome.
Tonight at church, the series we’ve been talking about is called “Wrestling With God,” and for the first time since I’ve been attending, the two lead pastors took a step down and let someone else take the stage. Ben Foote, our middle school & high school age pastor taught us a lot about what it can look like to wrestle with God, first using the story of Moses, and then his own. I’m not sure I’ve ever related to a testimony as much as I did to his, and that being said, it was a pretty emotional service. But as I sit here tonight, watching The Prince of Egypt, it’s absolutely awesome to me that this movie and this story, Moses’ story, has traveled with me throughout my entire life.
And it’s only throughGod that I completely understand the meaning of word “awesome.”
ms. believer 