A couple of weeks ago my wife and I watched the suspense movie Flight Plan. It’s pretty good, but what really stuck with me was the turning point for the main character. [WARNING: spoilers follow]
Jodie Foster plays a distraught widow flying with her sad young daughter and her husband’s body from Europe back to the US, when she wakes up mid-flight to find her daughter apparently kidnapped. The kidnappers have planned it to look to everyone else like the daughter was never there and the mother is crazy with grief. The plan is so devastating that after being restrained and made to listen to a psychiatrist, Foster’s character seems to begin to believe herself that she only imagined that her daughter was really there.
But just as she’s about to abandon herself to despair, she leans over, almost sobbing, and breathes on the cold little window. That’s when she sees it: the heart that her daughter had drawn on the window after fogging it up with her breath right after boarding. The kidnappers hadn’t known about it and therefore couldn’t erase it. This was one solid evidence that couldn’t be ignored, couldn’t be explained away. It’s a proof that awakens her from the slough of despond and, ironically, considering what everybody else aboard thinks of her, strengthens her sanity. It instantly reassures the mother and revives her will to fight. Needless to say, from there she launches an ingenious solo investigation that leads to the kidnappers being punished and her daughter being rescued.
For me, in real life, that heart on the window is the Book of Mormon. The world is full of spiritual conspirators of all stripes who would love to convince us that we’re crazy for believing in Jesus Christ, even going so far as trying to remove any arguments for Him from our culture, history, and public lives. Like those poor souls who were lost in the mist of darkness in Lehi’s dream (1 Nephi 8:23), many of us do become swayed by the massive tide of majority opinion whispering in our ears that we’ve been deluded.
But when we’re being assaulted for our belief, and especially when we’re tempted to give in and give up, we can always lean over and see that perfect, beautiful, crystal clear little heart on the window, left there by the One in whom we place our faith, and on whom we center our lives. The Book of Mormon is a solid physical evidence that God is not only there, but knows us and loves us, and is helping us find our way back to Him.
And just like that valiant mother in Flight Plan, when we’ve had our spirits lifted and filled by that blessed gift, we can go back out and fight the evil with twice the power we had before, we can endure in the face of any opposition, and we can win the goal of our contest: a reunion with the beloved family member who left us that precious gift in the first place.
Sweet!