Advent Reflections 03
Liz shares weekly reflections on the period of advent.
There is a moment over the Christmas holidays that we reach in our family when we can’t take another Christmas movie!
My son Nate loves movies and is really interested in how they are filmed and put together. In his room is an old poster of mine of The Shawshank Redemption with the headline, ‘Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free.’
I studied film in University and particularly loved analysing choices of light, framing of shots and camera angles to tell a story. It all really came home for me when I watched Shawshank. I don’t want to spoil your potential Christmas viewing so I will just say that the end scenes use space and light alongside a poetic depiction of hope being returned to someone who had given up on it entirely. It gets me every time! I look at this picture every time I go into Nate’s room because it depicts hope, not in a warm fuzzy feeling that surrounds Christmas, but in the brutal depths of the worst moment in someone’s life. It’s messy, unpleasant, unfair, brutal and scary and these are also the words that describe the reality of Jesus’ birth.
I regularly take great comfort in the fact that I follow Jesus into the spaces that I lead. I often say when I’m unpacking leadership that leadership looks like giving Jesus your ‘yes’ and trusting him to lead you into every space you find yourself – carrying the Kingdom of God — God’s way of doing things — to see those spaces changed.
Leadership can often feel more like a Shawshank movie than a warm fuzzy Christmas movie because when we lead with Jesus we carry a hope that defeats fear and invites freedom.