Sobering Night

This week was a sobering one. I was sharing with a friend all about the film Lily’s Choice and I talked about Lilias Trotter’s words about “an appointed time.” On my way home I had a call from a friend telling me that at the very time we were discussing the film, a French tourist was decapitated by ISIS in Algeria. The Middle East is on the cusp of major war. The drumbeats of war are everywhere. There is hatred for everything western. As terror expands, many people are beginning to feel a real hatred unfairly towards Arabs and Islam. In the midst of all of this, in a miraculous way, at God’s appointed time, important Ruskin letters to Lilias Trotter were found.

In God’s appointed time in the midst of hatred, misunderstanding, war, and terror, at this very moment we have the message of Jesus Christ through Lilias’ life. This is a message of love—the message of a woman who gave up fame, fortune and comfort to commit her life to the people of Algeria. As the film will show, the Algerians marveled at how much she loved and respected them.

On top of this, we have her respect for the Sufi mystics and what she believed was their genuine searching for God and the respect they held for Jesus. So we have 3 themes in her life: sacrifice, love and respect. You could not have a more powerful message than this in God’s appointed time. This film is not ours. As Sally has said on several occasions we are “just being carried along,” extremely, blessed, that God is letting us observe His unfolding story in His appointed time. We can only marvel and watch God’s hand. This is a time to be prayerful, but also mindful of the devil. In my family we have had extreme health issues. I truly believe as the Bible states clearly that there are forces that surround us that do not want this film to go out. But of course it’s unstoppable because it is not our film. We need to communicate with more and more people to be praying. Lilias’ story is wonderful, but it’s not just a good story. There is something bigger going on and none of us really know how this is all going to play out.

The greater God’s purposes in this film, the more trouble may surround us. So be prepared. Pray constantly. We can’t let the sin of pride get in our way. Miriam Rockness and Laura Waters Hinson have done an incredible job on this film. We are very proud of them.

My nature runs to pride very quickly. We have to fight this every step of the way so the film will reach its maximum effectiveness and God gets all the glory.

Devin Brown and Greg Bandy have done a wonderful job telling the story of Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven. This documentary will be aired on EWTN on October 14th at 6:30 EST (Visit the EWTN channel finder to find the correct channel for your area.).

We are also grateful to Matthew Oxley, Greg Bandy, Devin Brown and Sonja Peterson for The Hound of Heaven: A Modern Adaptation.

Another wonderful story of God’s moving in miraculous ways is the fantastic work of Nate Wilson and Aaron Rench, in directing the short live film The Hound of Heaven, which has been selected to be shown at the Raindance Film Festival this weekend, October 4.Aaron, said: “It’s amazing to see what God can do with one talent.”The Hollywood Reporter has a short article and movie trailer to get a glimpse of what is happening with that film.This is what is happening with Emblem Media. Sally and I are grateful to you all.Amazing Grace—That’s what it is!