Christmas at the Movies: The Polar Express

“Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.”  – Luke 1:45

The Polar Express is a classic children’s book that was made into a 2004 movie starring Tom Hanks. You’ve probably seen it. If you have, you’ll recall that it tells about a young boy who doubts the existence of Santa Claus. It’s well past bedtime on Christmas Eve, and as he lies in bed, he longs to hear the sound of reindeers’ sleigh bells, which would prove to him that Santa is real. But the boy doubts that he’ll ever hear that sound. Although he really wants to believe, the honest truth is … his belief in Santa is hanging by a thread.

Of course, we know what happens next. The young boy climbs on board The Polar Express, where he and about 10 other children drink hot cocoa and embark on a thrilling, rollercoaster-like ride down a steep canyon and across a frozen lake. Eventually, they make it to the North Pole none the worse for wear. And throughout their long journey north, this young boy continues to wrestle with his doubts. He hopes that his midnight train ride will lead to a rekindled belief in Santa Claus. But he fears that it’s all just a dream.

I wonder if Mary had a similar reaction when the angel Gabriel appeared to her in Luke 1. Did she pinch herself to see if she was dreaming? Did she rub her eyes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things? I don’t know. But I do know that she was shocked, scared and confused. Yet despite all that, she listened intently to every word as the angel told her: “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end” (vs. 30-33).

Mary responded to this astonishing news in verse 34 by asking only one simple question: “How will this be since I am a virgin?” Compare that to her cousin Zechariah’s reaction when Gabriel appeared to him a few months earlier. Gabriel told Zechariah that his barren and now elderly wife Elizabeth would give birth to a son named John (who would grow up to be John the Baptist). Like Mary, Zechariah responded with a question: “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years” (v. 18). At first glance, Zechariah’s question seems very similar to Mary’s. But there’s a BIG difference. Zechariah asked, “How CAN this be?” Mary asked, “How WILL this be?” Zechariah responded with UNBELIEF. Mary responded with BELIEF.

On The Polar Express, our main character continues his journey of faith. The young boy comes face-to-face with his own unbelief when he meets a mysterious hobo who has some doubts of his own. The hobo tells him, “Seeing is believing.” Is that true? For many people, the answer to this question is a resounding “Yes.” Their belief is limited to what they can see with their eyes, what they can hear with their ears, and what they can touch with their fingertips. In other words, if they can’t personally experience it with their five senses, they don’t believe it.

But then, about 15 minutes or so after the hobo scene, the little boy is talking with the conductor. In just a few words, the conductor offers him what I believe is the greatest nugget of wisdom in the entire movie: “Sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we CAN’T see.”

And he’s right. We can’t see God the Father. We can’t see Jesus Christ. We can’t see the Holy Spirit. We can’t see heaven. We can’t hear eternal life. We can’t taste forgiveness. We can’t touch love, grace or forgiveness. But we know that they are even more real than the clothes on our backs. They are more real than the car you drive, more real than the chair you’re sitting in, more real than the screen you’re reading this on. For many people in this life, seeing is believing. But if you have chosen to follow Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, you have chosen the path of faith. And on the path of faith, NOT seeing is believing. As Jesus said to Thomas after showing his doubting disciple the proof of his resurrection, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

When the Polar Express reaches the North Pole, the kids are surrounded by thousands of tiny elves. But the little boy still struggles to believe. He realizes that he needs to come to a point of belief, not after he sees Santa with his own two eyes, but before. As he stands in the village square, one of the reindeer’s sleigh bells is flung into the air and lands just a few feet from him. That is the moment he has to decide once and for all whether or not to believe in the one he cannot see. He picks the bell up and shakes it. Eyes shut tight, he whispers, “Okay … I believe. I believe!” And in that moment of faith, when he shakes the bell, its beautiful sound chimes out.

Zechariah responded to God’s word with unbelief. He was a “Seeing is believing” kind of Christian. Mary responded to God’s word with belief. She was a “walk by faith and not by sight” kind of Christian. Which kind of Christian are you? You’ve asked God to forgive your sins. Do you believe He has? Jesus said he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do you believe His words? Jesus said he’s going to heaven to prepare a place for each of his followers, including you if you truly follow him. Do you believe him?

Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth proclaimed in Luke 1:45: “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” So too will you be blessed as you believe the word of the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I believe! I believe!

Dane Davis is the Pastor of Impact Christian Church. Join us for our holiday message series, “Christmas at the Movies,” Sunday at 10 a.m. at the new Dr. Ralph Baker School in Victorville. For more information, visit www.GreaterImpact.cc.

The Difference Between Doubt and Unbelief

"All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus' words, acknowledged that God's way was right.... But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves."- Luke 7:29-30

A cocky young science professor began teaching at a small Midwest university. On the first day of class, it took his students less than five minutes to figure out that he was a strong atheist—and proud of it. He told the class: “Unless you shake off old-fashioned views and act for yourself, the world will leave you behind. Putting your faith in God won’t get you anywhere. Take rain-making. When the farmers prayed for rain, what did they get? The Dust Bowl. Now all they do is send up a plane, drop some chemicals on a cloud, and it rains. No question about that, is there?”

To the professor’s surprise, a farm boy sitting in the back row spoke up. “Professor, there’s still one question: Who gives us the cloud?”

The cocky professor hadn’t figured on that simple piece of evidence, and my guess is he wasn’t thrilled to have a student come along and poke a big hole in his argument. Did he take this new element into account? My guess is no—the professor had a big case of unbelief, and he would be in no hurry to part with it. On the other hand, many a committed Christian deals with doubt—even one as fervent and devoted as John the Baptist.

When John the Baptist had his moment of doubt while in prison and sent a message to Jesus, we read in Luke 7 that John’s disciples returned to John with Jesus’ answer. That reply showed that Jesus was a clear fulfillment of at least three different Old Testament prophesies. After John received that message, all indications are that he persevered in his faith. From his prison cell, John served Jesus faithfully until his dying day.

And for people who believed the truth about John the Baptist—that he was the promised prophet and the forerunner to the coming Christ—it was natural for them to believe the truth about Jesus. Even the tax collectors who had been baptized by John acknowledged that John was the promised forerunner to the Christ, and that Jesus himself was the promised Christ (Luke 7:29). But as we read on in verse 30, “the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.”

In other words, the religious leaders who didn’t believe in John rejected John’s call to repent and be baptized in preparation for the coming Messiah. And since they rejected his call to get ready for Jesus’ coming, it shouldn’t surprise us that they weren’t willing to believe in Jesus when he came. God had great plans for the Jewish religious leaders, but when they rejected John the Baptist, they rejected God’s plans for them. And once they started down the path of unbelief, they wouldn’t stop until Jesus was dead with his blood on their hands.

In verses 31-32, Jesus compared the religious leaders to a bunch of brats throwing a tantrum because the other kids aren’t playing by their rules. “For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and ‘sinners.’” No matter what John the Baptist or Jesus did, it wasn’t good enough for the Pharisees. So, they did what virtually every unbeliever has done over the past 2,000 years: They attempted to rationalize their unbelief by criticizing and even slandering God’s chosen leaders with accusations pulled out of thin air.

 Bottom line: The religious leaders’ hateful criticism of John and Jesus stemmed from their stubborn unbelief. And their unbelief was literally insane. Their refusal to accept the clear, observable facts about John and Jesus was insane. Their slanderous accusations were insane. And their jealous, vengeful drive to murder Jesus was especially insane. They refused to see the clear truth that John was the forerunner, and Jesus was the Christ. God had made sure that there was plenty of evidence to substantiate these two facts. As Jesus said in verse 35, “Wisdom is proved right by all her children.”

In Luke 7:18-23, John the Baptist struggled with doubt. In verses 7:24-35, Jesus talks about the religious leaders who were plagued by unbelief. And there’s a big difference between the two. Doubt is a matter of the MIND, but unbelief is a matter of the WILL. It’s one thing to doubt God’s goodness and plans because we can’t wrap our minds around it. It’s quite another thing to stubbornly refuse to believe His word and obey His word when the evidence is right in front of our faces.

Doubt is often nourished by physical and emotional strain, such as John’s when he was in prison, but unbelief is nourished by a stubborn heart that refuses to accept the evidence. Unbelief puts our circumstance between us and God, but faith—even doubting faith—puts God between us and our circumstance. May we always put God between us and our trials.

Dane Davis is the Pastor of First Christian Church in Victorville. For more information, visit www.YourVictorvilleChurch.com and join us for worship Sundays at 10 am.

Two Impossible Messages

“For nothing is impossible with God.”

- Luke 1:17

About a year after our first daughter was born, my wife took a pregnancy test and shared the good news: Our second baby was on the way. We were pretty excited. She set up an appointment with her ob-gyn, and he scheduled her for an ultrasound. It was incredible seeing the images of the tiny little baby inside my wife’s womb.

Several weeks passed and when we went in for a follow-up ultrasound, something looked a bit odd. It looked like the baby hadn’t grown since the last ultrasound. The doctor called us into his office and broke the news: The baby wasn’t alive. We were devastated, and we prayed for a miracle. But over the next week as further tests were run, the results were the same: The baby hadn’t made it. And I remember thinking: I wonder if we’ll ever be able to have another baby. At the time, I sure thought the answer was “No!”

Within the next six years, three more beautiful daughters came along, one by one, to prove me wrong. But at the time it sure felt like our baby bearing days were over. We were experiencing a small taste of what Zechariah and Elizabeth had been experiencing for many years … until Zechariah received some startling news in Luke 1.

Elizabeth, you may recall, was cousin to Mary, who would give birth to Jesus. But that comes later. At the beginning of Luke, all Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah knew was that they had prayed year after year to have a child, and year after year Elizabeth remained barren. We’re not told how old they were in Luke 1, but it’s likely that Zechariah and Elizabeth were in their 60s. Perhaps it had been 10 years since they had stopped praying for a child.

So, imagine Zechariah’s response when the angel Gabriel appeared to him in the temple and said, “Your prayer has been heard.” Gabriel told Zechariah that he would have a son who would be a source of joy for his family and for many people in Israel. He would lead many people back to God and pave the way for the Lord’s coming, turning the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to righteousness. What an amazing message to receive from one of God’s most famous angels!

But how did Zechariah respond? In verse 18, he said, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” Or, to translate: “Gabriel, I’m not so sure I believe you. You’ll need to prove it to me. Otherwise, I’m not buying it.” Um … not such a great response. It was the most amazing day in Zechariah’s life: He was in the temple serving the Lord, he was having a conversation with one of God’s greatest angels, he was being told that the prayer he had prayed for decades was finally being answered—and he didn’t believe it. He doubted the goodness and power of God. And since Zechariah responded with unbelief, God chose to discipline him by temporarily taking away his ability to speak. 

Compare that to Mary’s reaction when she had a face-to-face meeting a few months later with that very same angel. In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God dispatched Gabriel to deliver another very important message, this time to a teenage girl in the hills of Nazareth: “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” (Luke 1:31-32a).

Understandably, young Mary was blown away. And at first glance, her response to the angel seems very similar to Zechariah’s. She asked, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (v. 34). But although Mary’s reply sounds similar, it was actually very different. Zechariah said, “How can I be sure of this?” In other words: “I don’t really believe you.”  But Mary said, “How will this be?” In other words, “I believe you. But could you explain to me how God is going to pull this off with me being a virgin and all?” Zechariah’s response was a response of unbelief. Mary’s response was a response of faith.

Remember: Faith is a DECISION, not a FEELING. I imagine that when Gabriel delivered his messages to Zechariah and Mary, they both FELT confused; they both FELT overwhelmed; they both FELT unprepared to handle what God had in store for them. But there was a big difference in how these two handled these feelings. Zechariah allowed his uncomfortable feelings to overrule his faith in God’s goodness and power. But inside Mary’s mind and heart, faith ruled. Mary clung to her faith in God’s goodness and power despite her swirling, confused feelings.

Two very different responses to God’s good news from two different servants of God. One allowed his feelings to rule his faith. The other made a decision that her faith would rule her feelings. When God brings you some good news, which will rule your response: your feelings or your faith? I hope that, like Mary, you will make a decision to trust in the Lord’s power and goodness.

Dane Davis is the Lead Pastor of First Christian Church in Victorville. For more information,

visit www.YourVictorvilleChurch.com  and join us for worship Sundays at 10 a.m.