FORREST GUMP

 

FOUR STARS - UPLIFTING

 

 

       Overcoming adversity is the theme of one of the most popular movies of our time,’ “Forrest Gump.”

       Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, “Forrest Gump,” directed by Robert Zemeckis is a film that plays our emotions and our hopes like a master plays a violin. 

       Forrest, (Tom Hanks) is the slightly retarded (IQ.75) son of a remarkably resilient woman.    This mother (Sally Fields) takes a physically handicapped and retarded son and gives him the tools he needs to deal not only with such an unfair beginning, but to deal with life as a whole.

       Life is not fair.  Adversity, difficulty, abuse, and death strike our lives in irregular patterns. 

       But life is also not decided.  We can, with courage, integrity and faithfulness, transform adversity into blessings and shortcomings into benefits.   we can, with fear, anger and bitterness, be overcome by life’s adversities and be buried by our inabilities.

       The difference is in our attitude.

       Forrest was taught to look at life as an adventure.  Like picking a chocolate from the box, the adventure is that “you never know what you are going to get.” hat might on the surface appear to be devastation, can, in the right person, become fuel for tremendous achievement.

       Symbolic of this truth were the withered legs of Forrest Gump.  Born deformed, needing braces, ridiculed by peers, Forrest overcame his defection by running everywhere.   He became an all-American running back!

       Forrest exhibits this same attitude in every area of his life:  hospitalization becomes the fuel for becoming an international ping-pong champion.  A storm becomes the cause of his unparalleled shrimp business success.  His faithfulness to his troubled lieutenant becomes a business partnership in which he becomes an extremely wealthy man.

       And finally, his unrequited love for Jenny, his childhood friend, becomes the final joy of his life as his unconditional love joins them in marriage and the care of his son.

       This note of victory over adversity is played even more clearly as Jenny contrasts it to the failure to overcome adversity.

       Life was not fair to Jenny, either.  Reared in an alcoholic home by a sexually abusing father, Jenny was never taught the tools of life.

       Running from her father, her pain, and her life, Jenny avoids facing her pain and is neither pure, faithful, nor wise.

       In a moving scene in which, as a woman, she returns to the dilapidated home of her childhood, we join her in her anger as she picks up rock after rock and throws it at the house.

       Finally exhausted, she sits on the ground and weeps.  Forrest, who has been watching her, goes to her and comforts her, and we hear him say, “For some things, there just aren’t enough stones!”

       Throwing stones at life and at those who hurt us has always been unsuccessful.  Jesus taught us this truth in the biblical account of the woman caught in adultery and the religious leaders wanting to stone her.

       Jesus said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."  

       The successful overcoming of sin in ourselves and others involves   becoming persons of courage, purity, faithfulness and love by God’s power at work in our lives.

       When Jenny, with Forrest’s help, faces her pain, cleans up her life, receives his love and pledges her faithfulness to him in marriage, for the first time her life becomes a joy.

       This message is a clear spiritual message of hope.     If a retarded, deformed man and an abused, damaged woman can overcome the unfairness of life, then so can we.

       This message is also true.  The values of courage, integrity, purity, faithfulness and love are an echo of the biblical truth that the power of God is experienced through “faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love!”

       We are not surprised at the success of “Forrest Gump.”  The simple spiritual faith of Forrest and the explicit demonstration of the power of faith, hope and  love are a message that people have been responding to for generations.

 

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