Speak Relief from A Rescued Heart

While you’re doing your regular job, I’m rewinding the animated movie Bolt sixty-seven times, so that I can find familiar words for my Spanish students to listen for.

There is Mittens, a street-hardened cat who has fallen into the hands of the animal catcher. We see her back turned to us, as she cowers in the corner of the cage. Hopeless. Resigned.

Meanwhile, there is Bolt –super hero dog, breaking into the pound for a covert rescue.

He speaks her name, and Mittens turns around. “Bolt? What are you doing here?” she asks.

Now that I have labored through many movies, for the sake of Spanish lessons, I find that all of the best hero stories are filled with the same question.

And in that one question is all of Easter.

I find myself saying the same words as I lift the bread to my lips, followed by the juice (Southern Baptist, you know.) His body broken for me. His blood spilled for me. I say with incredulity, remembering the bars of my own prison, “Jesus, what are you doing here?”

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:

While we were still sinners,

Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8 (NIV)

Who would have expected that we ever could have gotten out of the jam we were in?