{"id":2219,"date":"2022-12-15T08:36:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T13:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2219"},"modified":"2022-12-15T08:36:38","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T13:36:38","slug":"home-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/15\/home-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.
 
Throughout the season of Advent \u2013 which this year encompasses the four weeks leading up to December 25 \u2013 we\u2019re looking at classic Christmas movies and how they might connect us to the miracle of God choosing to become a human being.<\/em>

Bad assumptions can lead to big mistakes.
 
Shortly before shooting began in 1990 on a new Christmas movie written and produced by John Hughes, Warner Brothers executives refused to authorize a slight budget increase.  They assumed the movie wasn\u2019t worth investing a few extra bucks.
 
Big mistake.  Fox immediately picked up the Hughes project, approved its budget of $18.2 million, and watched it become a global phenomenon.  Home Alone<\/em> to date has earned almost $800 million and remains the highest-grossing live-action comedy of all time. 
 
As critic Jeremy Arnold recounts, Hughes got the idea for the movie \u201cright before a family trip to Paris.  He was going over a list of things not to forget when he wondered what would happen if he \u2018forgot\u2019 his youngest child.\u201d  Within a few weeks he had written a new screenplay.  From the start he imagined young Macaulay Culkin playing Kevin McCallister, an eight-year-old who is accidentally left at home when his family makes a mad dash to the airport a few days before Christmas. 
 
Kevin immediately makes a couple of assumptions.  He must be so unimportant to his family that they failed even to notice his absence. 
 
On the other hand, it dawns on him that being alone might turn out to be a blast.  He takes over the house.  He can finally enjoy a cheese pizza without his big brother grabbing the last slice.  He can celebrate Christmas all by himself.
 
Then loneliness sets in.  He visits a local Santa and admits that what he really wants is to be reunited with his family by December 25.
 
Along the way he has to fend off the Wet Bandits, a pair of bumbling burglars played by Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci.  It was a great year for Pesci.  Goodfellas<\/em> was in the theaters at the same time, featuring his performance as a murderous mobster, for which he would receive an Academy Award.  Home Alone<\/em> was a welcome change of pace.    
 
Hughes imagined the McCallister house as a weapon that Kevin, with his childlike imagination, could deploy against the burglars.  Daniel Stern\u2019s \u201ctarantula shriek\u201d remains one of the top 10 movie screams of all time. 
 
To steel himself for the final Christmas Eve battle defending his home, Kevin drops into a local church during a choir rehearsal. There he comes face to face with Old Man Marley, his neighbor.  Kevin has always assumed that the stories told about this reclusive man are true.  He is a serial killer known as the South Bend Shovel Slayer.   
 
But during a tender conversation, he finds out he\u2019s wrong.  Marley is suffering through a prolonged separation from his family.  He hesitates to call his son because he\u2019s afraid he won\u2019t be willing to talk.
 
Kevin asks, \u201cNo offense, but aren\u2019t you a little old to be afraid?\u201d  Marley replies, \u201cYou\u2019ve never too old to be afraid.\u201d
 
The young boy and old man find common ground.  They\u2019ve made unwarranted assumptions about the scariness of visiting basements and whether family arguments can ever be resolved.  Before the movie ends, Marley will save the day \u2013 by using a shovel, no less.  Here\u2019s their church conversation:  Home Alone (1990) || Church full scene || Kevin & Old Man Marley || with Subtitles – YouTube<\/a>
 
About six weeks ago I began to receive calls from a number I did not recognize. 
 
If I answered the phone, there was always a brief moment of silence.  Then I could hear the background thrum of a Call Center, where a number of associates were having conversations.  After about five seconds someone would say, \u201cIs this Mr. McDonald?\u201d  Once I listened long enough to hear the associate say to me, \u201cI\u2019d like to talk to you about some money that you owe.\u201d
 
I knew this drill.  Older people (OK, that would be me) are frequent targets of scam artists.  They pose as representatives of the IRS or my bank or some organization that insists I have a debt to pay.  If I don\u2019t comply, financial penalties will begin to kick in and I might soon find myself standing before a judge.  \u201cNo, thank-you,\u201d I said, and hung up.
 
But they just kept calling.  At all hours.  Early in the morning, late at night, and even on weekends.  Mary Sue encouraged me not to answer.  But on a couple of occasions I couldn\u2019t resist.
 
As one of the associates launched into her canned speech I said, \u201cOh, I\u2019m so glad you called.  I\u2019m hoping you\u2019re going to help me receive the $6,000 you owe me.  That\u2019s the purpose of your call, right?\u201d  She stammered a bit and said, \u201cUh, I don\u2019t know anything about that.\u201d  Of course not.  Another time I berated the caller.  \u201cDo you honestly feel good about yourself trying to rip off vulnerable people?\u201d \u2013 making it abundantly clear that I was not going to be one of those people.
 
The calls kept coming.  Once again I decided to answer.  This time, however, the associate got in a word before I could say anything. \u201cMr. McDonald, I represent a debt collection agency, and you owe this amount of money to a local veterinary clinic.\u201d 
 
I was absolutely stunned.  She was describing a real debt for services that had actually been rendered five months earlier.  We had assumed the clinic had had our credit card on file, and the bill had already been paid. 
 
More specifically, I had assumed that I was right.  I knew what I was talking about.  I even assumed I had earned the privilege of talking rudely to people who were just doing their jobs. 
 
We paid the bill and apologized to the vet clinic.   Then, a few days later, I redialed the number of the folks who had called me so many times.  One of the associates answered.  I admitted I had behaved dreadfully.  He laughed.  \u201cIt\u2019s OK, Mr. McDonald, people treat us that way all the time.\u201d  That was a deeply sad thing to hear.  I wished him a happy Christmas, and he did the same.  And I resolved to be vigilant concerning future assumptions. 
 
Bad assumptions can lead to big mistakes.
 
That is certainly true when it comes to relating to God.   
 
If we\u2019re going through hard times, we might assume that God is angry.  We must have offended him somehow.  Or if we\u2019ve pursued a relationship or a pattern of behavior that we know is flat wrong, and there haven\u2019t been any negative consequences, we might assume that God doesn\u2019t care about integrity or holiness after all.
 
Those are major mistakes. 
 
Spiritual assumptions must be tested against the truths of God\u2019s Word.  What we think and feel on our own will never cut it. 
 
The accounts of Jesus\u2019 birth, likewise, are famously illustrative of how assumptions can take us down the wrong path.  Those awaiting the Messiah\u2019s birth assumed that God would arrive in spectacular fashion, armed to the teeth, ready to elevate Israel and chop the Roman Empire down to size.  Herod assumed that he could thwart God\u2019s plan with a show of force. 
 
What no one saw is that God\u2019s Son would be born to a peasant couple in a backwater sheep town and grow up as a helpless, vulnerable child \u2013 which is exactly what he was.
 
I can just imagine Kevin McCallister saying to me, \u201cNo offense, Reverend McDonald, but aren\u2019t you a little old to be making unfounded assumptions?\u201d
 
Apparently not.  We\u2019re never too old to misread reality.
 
But thank goodness, in the spirit of all the classic Christmas movies, it\u2019s never too late for us to go a different way.

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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Throughout the season of Advent \u2013 which this year encompasses the four weeks leading up to December 25 \u2013 we\u2019re looking at classic Christmas movies and how they might connect us to the miracle of God choosing to become a human being. Bad assumptions can lead to big mistakes. Shortly before shooting began… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[539],"class_list":["post-2219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2222,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions\/2222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}