SPOILER ALERT: I’m not going to ruin the movie for you.  I’m not going to tell you what it’s about or how it ends.  If you wanna know that you can find out for yourself.  But I am going to briefly talk about the book.  So if you don’t wanna know, stop reading now and come back when you have seen the movie.

The Book Of Eli is the story of a man, Eli, who is in possession of the last Bible in the post-apocalyptic world.  He is in search of a place that the Bible will be safe and shared with everyone.  As in all movies, the hero encounters obstacles and bad guys along the journey.  But this post isn’t about the movie.  It’s about learning from it.  It’s about realizing something that we often ignore.

As the hero in the movie, Eli knows the power of the book he carries.  He reads it every day and night.  He protects it with his life.  He is determined to share it with the needy world.  But the thing that hit me was that he understood the importance of the Scriptures.  He refused to let anything happen to it and did not take it for granted.  In a world of death and darkness, he held on to the light for all it was worth.

Think about the world we live in.  It is quite different than the world portrayed in the movie.  Even in times of need there is abundance.  We have more than we deserve.  We have a tendency to take the important things for granted because we don’t realize how precious they really are.  We have Bibles all over the place.  Maybe you are like us and have several in the cabinet, a link to an online Bible on your computer and an app on your phone.  We even stock them in hotel rooms (thanks to the Gideons)!  We are more interested in the newest Harry Potter book that we are the Bible.

What if we actually lived our lives knowing that the words that we have are sacred?  What if we knew the Scriptures like Eli?  What if the Bible wasn’t just a commodity?  What if we lived as though spreading the words to those that needed to hear them was the main goal?

I bet our world would be quite different then.