There is a moving scene in the movie Dr. Zhivago where the Comrade General is talking with Tanya about a traumatic experience in her childhood. He asks her, “How did you come to be lost?” She replies, “Well, I was just lost.” He persists and asks again, “No, how did you come to be lost?” Tanya doesn’t want to say, but finally gives another cursory explanation: “I was just lost. My father and I were running through the city, and it was on fire. The revolution had come, and we were trying to escape; and I was lost.”
The Comrade General kept pressing: “How did you come to be lost?” She still didn’t want to say, but finally blurted out: “We were running through the city, and my father let go of my hand and I was lost.” Then she added plaintively, “He let go.” This is what she didn’t want to say. The Comrade General said, “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you, Tanya. Komarov was not your real father. Zhivago is your real father, and I can promise you, Tanya, that if this man had been there, your real father, he would never have let go of your hand.”
Witnessing is just telling people what their real Father is like. The message we have to give to the world is they are lost only because the false gods they were trusting in let them go and let them down because they were not their real Father. Their real Father never would let go of their hand. I think Jesus was saying there are many people who are like Tanya in Dr. Zhivago. They got lost, not because of something that was their fault, but they became helpless and harassed when the world let go of them. They are wandering and simply need to be found.
(Rodney Buchanan, SermonCentral.com)
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