TAKE TWO...?

     

      “And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgement, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”  Hebrews 9:27-28 

     If there was one thing that I loved most about being in theater, it was this one thought: you don’t get a second take.  I was remembering my senior year performance of Dracula, the last UIL competition, for many of us.  From the moment the curtain rose, to the final fade out, I was on that stage, save for a couple of minutes.  What if I had to sneeze?  What if I started hiccupping?  A number of possible outcomes, leading to my embarrassment, entered my mind.  What’s worse: What if I forgot a line?  Now, I was pretty decent at recovering from a forgotten line, or throwing in ad libs.  However, portraying a doctor, there where terms that I could NOT fake, if I tried!  I had to get it right.  I couldn’t run behind the set, if something went wrong.  Yet, something did go wrong, right at the very beginning of the performance.
     As I stood in my position, frozen, I heard a THUD, that was not part of any of our sound effects.  One of our props, in this case a mirror, took a nose-dive off of the back of one of the set pieces.  The curtain was up, lights still dimmed.  The audience saw this.  Our competitors (the various other schools) were watching.  How did we handle it?  As if nothing had happened and the mirror never existed, in spite of the fact that the mirror was a vital part to the story.  The show had to go on.    
     In live theater, there are no directors yelling “Cut!”, “Action!”  There is the ONE take, the ONE chance to get it right.  Regardless of what happens, the show must go on.  It tests the will of the actor.  If something falls out of synch with the script, a stealthy recover must be made, so the audience is none the wiser.  To me, that was the fun part of theater.  The moments of needing to think on your feet.  You can’t rely on the director telling you what to do or say.  It is all on you!  NOOOOO PRESSURE!  The secret is, we were prepared to handle these situations.  It was embedded in us.  We didn’t go around practicing for things going wrong.  We just learned to think quickly, to absorb ourselves into the situation and respond as naturally as we would as if it were real life.
     Guess what?  We are all standing on a stage (Earth).  We are all given a role (our lives).  Here is the kicker: we aren’t given a script, per se.  We are given the guidelines, the “Rulebook to Acting on the Stage of Life”.  God’s word.  The Bible.  From it, we are to learn our part.  We are to learn how we are to behave, and treat others.  From it, we learn our “character study”, how we are to present ourselves as God’s children.  God is the director but, this is live stage.  The show must go on.  If you make a mistake, you must learn how to recover, on the go.  After all, when the final curtain falls, the show is over.  There are no redo’s.  No second take.  After the “performance”, we will stand before the Almighty and be judged on our performance.  “I didn’t know…” won’t get us excused from a poor performance (Romans 3:20).  We had the guide, all along.  Read Revelation 20:11-15.
     While the “show” continues to go on, I am thankful that I am given the opportunity for my “character” to grow.  Like many stories on the big screen, often you see someone dealing with personal conflict and corrupt nature, finding themselves and their place in life.  That is what God is trying to get us to see.  Use the guidelines, so that we may learn how we are expected to portray our parts, while the “show” is going on.  We only have until the final curtain.  Then, it will be too late to hope to go back and “fix” our performance.