#8 JUST LIKE HEAVEN

Memorable Lines from Movies, Big Story in Bible 

#8 JUST LIKE HEAVEN
What Is Life All About? 

Just Like Heaven is a 2005 romantic comedy, but the story is much more. Beneath the light comedic moments lies the sobering age-old question, “What is life?”  

Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon), a super-busy, work-obsessed doctor, finally makes time for a blind date. As usual, she knocks off work late, and drives off in a rush. In the rain, the screen suddenly goes blank. She blacks out as an accident knocks her unconscious. 

The scene shifts. Enters David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo), a landscape architect recovering from his wife's death. He rents an apartment which happens to belong to Elizabeth whose body is comatose in the hospital. 

She wakes up, not as herself but as an out-of-body spirit. She returns to her apartment to find it occupied by a stranger. A battle of mutual annoyance follows which gradually morphs into a love relationship. Meanwhile, the hospital authorities, following existing protocol, sets a date to switch off life support for Elizabeth’s body. 

Realising that life is about to be nipped, just as love between her and David is blossoming, she reviewed her own life, one driven by work and career. With aching regrets, she asks, “What was it all for? Where's the joy? Where's the love? Where has it all gone?" These poignant lines must resonate with many who, like Elizabeth, have misplaced their values and priorities. Is it too late to turn life around? 

Big Story in Bible

Jesus once asked a haunting question, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36 ESV

We can have everything, and yet in the end, have nothing. 

The whole world cannot match up to the worth of a soul. In the Bible, life is always seen from the perspective of the end. So Jesus tells a parable about someone, not unlike Elizabeth, whose life is obsessed with building bigger barns to rake in bigger harvests and profits. 

“But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”Luke 12:20-21 ESV

Just Like Heaven is a movie that jolts us from our earthly preoccupation to live with one eye fixed towards heaven. We never  know when that lifeline to earth would be switched off.