Prince of Egypt

There are few things that bring tears to my eyes like films; on that score, there are few films like Prince of Egypt. I don't even own a copy! I use short extracts for lessons, but I first saw it when unwell a few years ago. Back then I was considering a call to ministry and newly married. The scene in which Moses speaks to Zippora of his calling brought me to tears then. This time it was the scene in which Jocabed puts baby Moses into the Nile. He's sooo the age of my own son! I was almost in tears in front of year 7.
Why do I mention this on what is generally quite a high-minded blog? Because particularly in the songs, but also in the wonderful portrayal of the tenth plague, the filmmakers get the "drama of the doctrine". Okay, you might think Whitney Houston's "There may be miracles when you believe" is a bit short on Reformed Theology - and you'd be right. But in so far as Prince of Egypt is teaching doctrines, they are dramatic and dramatised, even dramaticised.
Yet Christians have been delivered not from earthly slavery into a land, but from darkness into His wonderful light (1st Peter 2:10). That is a far bigger drama! Yet do we see it that way? Rejoice in being swept up into the biggest movement of history, the greatest show in the world? I felt history was being made, like I was "glad to be alive" when the Berlin Wall fell: I rejoiced to be a human being - and I was only 12 and it wasn't happening to me. But here I am, a thinking 30 year old, and I really am part of the greatest story ever told, and that by no virtue of my own but purely by those of Him whose story it is. Wow!