Oh, there you are, Peter!

I’m not a movie buff, but I do have my favorites.  One of them is “Hook.”  Although I’ve seen the movie at least a dozen times, one scene gets to me every time I watch it.  If you haven’t seen the movie, “Hook” is about a man named Peter Banning who has lost his identity and is on a search to find out who he is.    

His home life is a mess: not balancing work demands, fighting with his children and wife, etc. His wife’s mother, whom we later discover is Wendy, guides him back to Neverland.  It’s there we find him among the treehouses with the Lost Boys.  They are trying to figure out who this giant, grown-up person is, and one of the boys tries to help Peter figure it out.  The boy looks at Peter’s face, thinking something there looks familiar. Then, he places his hands on Peter’s face, moves the skin around and, as he tightens the skin on Peter’s face, exclaims; “Oh, there you are, Peter!”

It’s the defining moment in the movie for Peter Banning as he discovers, with the help of a Lost Boy, who he is.  Once he knows who he is, he can do what he was made to do: free Neverland once and for all from Hook, Captain Hook.

Until we discover who we are, life can be confusing.  It only when our relationship with God is right, that our relationship with each other is made right.  That’s the way things work.  It’s the way we are created.  When we don’t know who we are, everything else in life is out of balance.  We can look in the strangest places, in the strangest ways, trying to figure this out. But it’s only when our relationship with God is restored that our relationships with one another can be as well. 

Shortcuts won’t work. 

When we attempt to find purpose — what is ours to do — without first getting our relationship with God right — who we were created to be — there is nothing we can do to fill that void.  It’s doing things backward.  It’s attempting to use things to fill our desire to have meaning, when we were designed to have that desire met in relationship.  No amount of causes we become involved in will satisfy us.  Our relationships with one another will never become all that God intended them to be. 

Just like Peter Banning couldn’t settle his own inner struggle, we can’t either.  An encounter with God is like that moment in “Hook” when a Lost Boy helps Peter discover who he is.  In that moment, Peter remembers what he was created to do. 

What I’m talking about is much more important than a children’s story or a movie.  The way for us to discover who we are isn’t in returning to a “Neverland.” The way is to allow God to place His hands on our face, move some skin around and, as our relationship with Him is restored, hear Him say as He looks us in the face: “Oh, there you are!”

John 15:4–11