I Can Only Imagine a Good Christian Movie
I saw Only Imagine yesterday for two reasons.
Bart, the song’s author that the movie is about, is an old friend, and
I had been up since 3:15am, done church and had a wonderful fish taco lunch, and figured the reclining theater seats would make for a fabulous nap.
I was wrong on both accounts.
First, I am Bart’s old friend like a White House substitute one-day groundskeeper is a friend of Obama. We met once, when I was at a Mark Matlock Youth Conference. Mark and I had run into each other before, and he at least knew my name. I once booked him at our church in Tucson for a weekend conference. Later JoLynn and I moved to Winnipeg, and we brought a youth group down to Fargo to see Mark and this band that was traveling with him, called Mercy Me.
They weren’t bad.
The conference was small and, for Mark / Mercy Me Conference, a little flat. Mark decided to spice things up by escaping from a strait jacket, while suspended 100-ft high from a crane connected only with a fast burning rope tied to one leg, over concrete and hissing cobras. Or something like that. Bert decided that the best way to spice things up was to sing a song he had written for his dad called I Can Only Imagine. It wasn’t released yet except on a CD that Matlock I think had produced.
We heard it first.
I still remember that night, and still have that early release CD of the song. Not sure there is a working CD player left to play it on however.
I also kept the hospital wrist tag that Mark wore later that night.
The lessons are these:
If you ever say you are, “driving down to Fargo,” you are living in the wrong place.
It’s OK to lie in blogs. Mark didn’t go to the ER. But I do remember him escaping from a strait jacket while hanging from church beams over a large organ. Not sure why he didn’t get the movie.
There IS a good Christian move! Well, for anything but a nap. I missed mine till after I got home.
Go see Only Imagine.
By the way, it came in as the third-biggest movie in America last weekend, behind only Black Panther and Tomb Raider. Not bad for a movie about a guy who has forgotten he once knew Dan Cooley… for a day.
Advertisements
