If you missed out on this incredible show, and have no idea even of the premise, Joan is a teenager girl that God chooses for "missions," if you will. As you can imagine, that first conversation didn't go over particularly well or easily. And God is pretty much exactly how you would expect: God is a lot more tell and a lot less explain. LOL. Notice how God didn't do a lot of explaining in The Bible, either. It was a lot of "do as I ask." Eventually Joan came to see how there was a Greater Plan in play when she simply did as God asked, but she never had an easy time of it.
One of the things I really liked about this show is that I always liked to imagine how much easier MY LIFE would be if I could actually talk to God and all things would be revealed. That show was an excellent reminder that God simply doesn't work that way. If God did work that way, we would all have direct phone lines straight to the Creator. Those phone lines don't exist NOT because God isn't CAPABLE of making them; instead they don't exist because we are meant to muddle our way through. It is the *point.*
This is one of my favorite clips from the entire series. God takes on many "forms" when he/she appears to Joan, so you never know precisely what God will look like. The assignment at the beginning of this episode (for Joan) was to convince her friend Adam not to put his art in the school Art Show. She failed at the task and he won first place. The clip begins with Joan and God. Joan is headed to school. It is the day after the Art Show. I love the part in the clip where God points out that it isn't faith if everything is explained. And pretty much everyone who has faith ~ at some point ~ also experiences a crisis of faith. In this blog, I have referred to my own crisis of faith as a meltdown and a literal shout-down match at God on several occasions. It kinda sorta looks ridiculous when you are all by yourself having this break. But, if you have ever been there and done that, I know you know what I mean! Incredible scene...
That clip always makes me cry. Actually that episode always makes me cry. I love the phrase that God uses: a failure of imagination. Isn't it horrible with irony that God warns Joan about having a failure of imagination, and then she goes and does it AGAIN? She already had done it once, and God called it what it was. And then she turned around and did it again, just far more epically and terribly. The ripples of that failure are felt for a long time. It takes a long time to heal the damage it does to her friendship with Adam. Even things done out of love can be so very hurtful. Of course, because the hurt was so deep the episode on Forgiveness that comes later in the season is also Epic, and will make you weep until you hurt. These two things walk hand in glove.
Joan of Arcadia: A Passion. And chuck full of Life Lessons. Like so many things, you came to an end way before your time.
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What did you think of the clip? Did it make you cry? When you make lousy decisions in the future will you now think of them as a failure of imagination? Have you ever had a crisis of faith?
