Adventure

We're watching the Bourne Ultimatum at my in-laws house, and, as usual, my pulse is up and I'm sweating a little--not because Matt Damon is easy on the eyes, but because this story line oozes excitement, suspense, and adventure.  Here's a guy who jets from one place to another trying to figure out who he is and what in the world he is about.  

It made me wonder, why do we love this movie?  What is so appealing about a guy with amnesia kicking major you know what?  

Maybe its because we want justice like Bourne wants justice.  Maybe its because we recognize that our world is jacked and needs someone to rescue it.  Maybe we want to know who we are and what we were made for.  Maybe its because we want, even need, a little more adventure. 

How many people have I met that are trying to "find themselves"?  How many have said, "I just don't know who I am"?  Bourne tries to find his answer in his past, and in plotting revenge on those who wronged him.  Others try to find it in their jobs, their friends, their hobbies, their nights out.  

Just like Bourne, who finds his answers wanting and leaping off a building, it seems to me that people looking for their answers continue to move up the corporate ladder or salary bracket, dive head first into one thing after another, or go out to the same clubs and bars night after night after night.  Does it really help, or leave us at the edge of a building contemplating the drop?

CS Lewis once said, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."  

Perhaps our fascination with Bourne ultimately points us to our deep need for something bigger than ourselves, bigger than our world.  Perhaps it points us to Jesus, who offers us love, a life of purpose, a life of adventure.  He probably won't give us a life like Bourne, but ultimately, He gives us something bigger, something far sweeter than kicking butt and outsmarting the ones in charge--a life that lasts forever with joy deeper and more pure than any pleasure the world can offer, more satisfying than the greatest act of vengeance, and more victorious than beating the world's most powerful government at their own game.