NOT A HITCHCOCK PLOT

It is necessary in telling a story to compress or blend details, or invent some elements entirely. One of the underlying principles in a motion picture or a good novel is to keep the plot going.

The viewer or reader isn’t interested in watching you clean your teeth or polish your shoes. ‘It doesn’t move the story forward’ the editor will say. The film director, Sir Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), is reported to have said, ‘Drama is life with the dull bits cut out’.

I often think I would like such an existence. Imagine: enjoying a four-course meal with no washing up afterwards; owning a stunningly beautiful garden with no weeds to pull; knowing lots of deep and interesting things without having to study. In short, reaping the benefits of toil, without the toil.

Of course, in real life the first principle of human existence is hard work and application. ‘Cursed be the ground for thy sake’ was the sanction pronounced on Adam.

The soil, up to that point in time a fruitful and accommodating servant to man’s needs, would now rise up in thorns and thistles to blight his existence, hastening his death through drudgery and weariness (Genesis 3: 17-19).

Ever since, mankind has attempted to mitigate the labour with innovation, clever machinery, electronic wizardry, and the thousand-and-one gadgets with which we keep the unpleasantness of life at bay.

We now live longer and, for most of us in the western world, more comfortably.

Still death comes longer delayed, but inevitable nonetheless.

Only Christ’s kingdom on earth will reverse the trend.

The drama of the Divine Plan which has been unfolding for the past six thousand years can be encapsulated in the words Creation, Fall, and Recovery, a formula which contains more profound truths than the imagination of most of mankind has yet grasped. It is the best story of all, and with the happiest of endings. – AP

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