Yes, other people got a foot up on the social ladder because George wasn’t into “kiss up and kick down.” For me, the most meaningful expression of Providence was when George faces his brother’s tombstone. Yes, Bedford Falls was a human community, not an upstate Times Square. Yes, by human standards, even by the standards of Bedford Falls, George might have materially done better.Īnd yes, because of his sacrifice, a better world was born. Sort of a fallen angel …”).īut the real expression of Divine Providence comes from George’s opportunity to see what his so-called meaningless life did. The appearance of Clarence, his guardian angel, is an obvious and explicit sign of God’s Providence, even if the appearance of Providence doesn’t quite measure up to our expectations (“Well, you look kind of like an angel I’d get. God did not abandon George Bailey, even if George never even really thought about that until that fateful Christmas Eve as he contemplates killing himself. When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.” Did God abandon him? “My precious child, I love you and would never leave you. In Footprints in the Sand, a Christian who questions God’s Providence asks God, while looking at a shore that symbolized his life, why at its hardest moments he saw but one set of footprints, not two. A meditation that was very popular in the 1970s captures it. God never backtracks on his word, even if we do on ours (2 Timothy 2:13). We often accuse God of “abandoning us” or “not being there when we needed him.”īut God is hesed, faithfulness. If he chastises, it’s to bring us back to him. There’s a line in the 1999 fantasy, Purgatory, that sums it up well: “The Creator may be tough, but he ain’t blind.” God is not a spiteful deity who wants to wreak revenge. Paul assures us, in Romans 8:28 that “for those who love God … everything works out for the good.” God’s Providence always tends to our good, whether we admit it or not, whether we see it or not. Maybe he never even consciously articulated them as acts of love. Perhaps he never even thought he was doing something “good.” Sure, one of the people praying for him at the beginning of the film asks God to “give him a break” because “George is a good guy.” And even though another asks God for help because “he never thinks about himself,” George probably never did … or if he did, he pushed the thought aside as not what you’re “supposed to do.” Perhaps George simply thought his choices were “the way you should do things” or “how you ought to live” or how a “man” (remember, this is the 1940s, the era of “toxic masculinity”) should act. Maybe even George Bailey never thought of his “making a sacrifice” for others.
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