Now You See Me movie

My wife and I just watched Now You See Me.  What a great movie!  If you're looking for a fun and

suspenseful thriller check this one out about four professional magicians who are drawn together by a mysterious man in order to pull off the most incredible and money-garnering 'tricks' ever done on stage.

As I watched I was thinking about this reality: people like to dabble in faith and belief as long as it has to do with hokey stuff.  We get all tingly about "believing in what you can't see" when it has to do with hocus-pocus.

Why do we feel so much less interested when it's not dark, or when it's not a cute, old crystal ball-reading lady like in The Princess and the Frog?

I could be crabby and say what a lot of religious folk do: it's because we don't want the demands and expectations that come with believing in a God that expects things of us.  Maybe that's true.  I don't know.  Something tells me the above can't be said unless you're feeling nicely self-righteous and wagging your finger like a Pharisee.

Maybe, instead, we get more queasy about the unknown because it might mean that Someone knows us in our ins and outs, our public and private selves.  I'm not talking about the creepy 'He's watching you, so watch out' stuff (that sounds a bit too much like Santa Claus with fangs).  I mean the fear we all have of being truly known.  Honestly, we're afraid and ashamed of the real us.  If the unseen God is allowed to be real and allowed to know us truly, we'll have to deal with the sting of fear-fear that He will reject us, or be disgusted, or find us so much less than we ought to be.

Or...

what if He was...safe.  What if we could open up our guts to him like breaking a huge dam and letting out all the crap and laying it bare.  What if, instead of doing all that work to keep up the facade and hiding, we stopped and listened and heard God say, "Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I'll give you rest" (Matthew 11).