The movie Invincible has been on quite a bit lately on one of the channels on cable. And due to my dumb Achilles tendon rupture and surgery I have had a little more time in front of the television than I would like  recently. As a result, I find myself watching shows and movies I have already seen. So as I was watching Invincible the other day, I started doing some internet research to find out the accuracy of the story being portrayed. The story is about a local man from Philadelphia, Vince Papale, who through a public tryout made the Philadelphia Eagles and got to play professional 3 seasons of professional football. As I did some research I right away began to see that in many ways the story Hollywood created was better than the actual story. The climax of the movie is Papale scoring a touchdown against the hated rival of the Eagles — the New York Giants. But in real life he never scored. In fact, Papale never scored a touchdown in the NFL.

This is par for the course in our world. What is sold to us and promised to us in life often does not deliver. The fiction is better than the truth. The movie is better than reality. This is true in many things, but I am quite certain it is not true in one area: The reality of connecting to Jesus is greater than any possible way that reality could be communicated. The real thing is even better than what is advertised, dramatized, or marketed.  The truth of  Jesus could never be outdone by a movie or a book. The unfortunate thing for many is that we treat fiction like the truth, and truth like fiction. The person of Jesus and the reality of following him is even better than can be imagined or presented.