God's Love, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid

God's Love, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid
by Pastor Ed Evans

The other evening I set aside a few moments to relax and watch some television. So much of the same formula trash was on, I started flipping through the channels looking for something different. What I found was “The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” It’s a classic western, but in case you’ve not seen it, it’s a movie about the adventures of two old west bank robbers, played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. This was the beginning of a life-long friendship for these two talented actors.
As the film was being made, a couple of other cameras were rolling, capturing all the behind-the-scenes activity, and this is what Producer George Ray Hill and Director William Goldman recalled and discussed, creating another production even before the movie was released in theaters.
Watching and listening to the byplay between Newman and Redford was fascinating. Out of their own acting experiences they often changed scenes and dialogue as they went along. It was with a respect for these two actors that the producer and director often allowed and worked around changes that came out of earnest conversations before each scene was shot.
Looking back at the thoughts and words and creative exchanges between these two actors, changes and suggestions to the shooting script which were sometimes questioned then, now made perfect sense.
It made me think about something I had read about how some people live their lives – backwards. They seem to always be looking back, as if what had been done in the past might guide their words, their actions, their lives in the future to come. But in living in the past, they so often missed the joy of coming attractions.
It’s has been said that, were we timeless like our God, that our lives would make perfect sense in retrospect.
It was very interesting to have producer Hill and director Goldman commenting on scenes, conversations they were not privy to at the time, and everything captured on film from the weather to the raucous but underplayed humor of Newman and Redford. There were decisions about clothing, contracting demolitions men for dynamite scenes, when to use stunt men and when and why Newman did so many of his own scenes.
In telling the history of the movie, the duplicate cameramen had also captured a precious and insightful aspect of both Newman and Redford, how they interacted with one another, and how they responded to the game of “pretend” we call movies.
What exciting lives we might live if we could “game” our lives with God, be privy to His insights for us, look ahead into our lives as an extension of what has already transpired, and consider how we might respond to it.
Exciting, yes! But some things would not change, for God does not change.
As an example, do you know that God loves you as much right now as He will ever love you? If you are trying to be good so you will gain His love, disciplining yourself to keep His commandments so He will love you more, if those are your motivations, you can stop now.
If you would only realize that God loves you more than anyone has ever loved you, or will ever love you, and loves you as much right this moment as He ever will, how might we respond to such love that is more forgiving, more understanding, deeper than anything we have ever known as love? That’s His love for us.
Now, put your mind on “review” and look back over your life. See your Father’s hand at work in the days of your life? Like in the poem, “Footsteps of Jesus,” do you see times where instead of two sets of footprints there are only one? And those would be the times He carried you.
Looking back, our lives have been much more full of life than the one depicted by that classic flick “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” for our lives have been real, full of all the slings and arrows, heartaches and high points of the real world. And He loved us every bit as much at our infantile beginning as He does right now. For He loves completely, fully, without reservation.
How touching and true the words written by Frederick M. Lehman in 1917, within the song “The Love of God.” If they seem to have a timeless aspect to them, perhaps it’s because Lehman based his verses upon the Jewish poem “Haddamut,” first penned in Aramaic in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai. It begins,
“The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
It begins and ends with the unfathomable love of the Creator for His creation. Seen forwards or backwards, in context or standing alone, He accepts no stand-in stunt men, but insists on dealing directly with you and I. Face it, He’s crazy about you.