42, the story of legendary Hall of Fame baseball player, Jackie Robinson, still lingers with me after all time. Even now I can’t get what Robinson went through out of my mind.
Imagine the intensity of cultivated hate passed from generation to generation. The small boy in the Whites Only section of the ball park mimicked his father’s actions when his father yelled disparaging comments at Robinson. Branch Rickey insisted Robinson turn the other cheek. Biblical references were not overdone and Rickey’s line calling Jackie, “…a living sermon,” is so true. That’s what Jackie Robinson was to thousands–a living sermon.
42 is a lesson in how to deal with difficulty. Fighting can be honorable, but times exist when your silence can speak louder than your words or actions. In Jackie’s case, the black man would have been dishonored had Jackie fought, though Jackie had every right to speak up. Jackie’s show of courage in his silence inspired me. His silence under the most cruel situations emotionally changed people’s minds and opened many doors for other black people to get into baseball. But will this lost generation see the movie?
My husband and I spoke about the culture and how most of this generation is more apt to see movies that glorify sex and violence and not 42 which grounds us in a better message–how to make a difference, stand for something without violence or disrespect, and exercise forgiveness.
Just recently, a man cut someone off and the affronted person gunned the engine to show how upset that made him. In San Diego, people would rather run you down than let you merge. Offending someone in gangland would get you shot. Protests in most cases are messy and violent and this is what this generation observes and mimics.
So it’s no wonder the man with the fast cars and many weapons wins over a legendary baseball player who stood up for blacks everywhere without using words or violence. 42 garnered 27.5 million in the first night compared to a movie like Fast and Furious 5 which took in, “$86.2 million at 3,644 locations over the weekend (2011),” ultimately breaking box office records with a total of $165 million in 2011.
42 is a movie with humor and heroics. It’s intense and powerful, lacking the usual liberal political agenda. This five-star movie caused me to want to read Jackie Robinson’s life story and it will stay with me a long time.
Imagine living the sermon of Christ and turning the other cheek when the world expects a different reaction. Have you ever turned the other cheek, lived the sermon, and what kind of fruit did that bring?
“…a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;” Ecclesiastes 3:7