Take one small, inbred country town.

Add a psychotic, delusional orphan girl.

Throw in a splash of raspberry cordial.

Mix thoroughly.

What do you get?

That’s been my question.  Anne of Green Gables is closing this weekend, and I have spent a goodly chunk of the last two months helping to tell the story of a schizophrenic girl and her effect on an uptight little village.  As a man trying to live a life, “Worthy of the calling…” I don’t like to waste time on fluff, so I’m looking to see what value there was in this experience.  I don’t just mean the experience of doing a show—building friendships, having fun, spending time with my family, yadda, yadda, yadda—I’ve already written about all that.  I mean the value of telling this particular story.  I went looking for a worthy message.

I found three.

God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world.  Marilla, the spinster who takes Anne into her home, says this to Anne as declaration that her present “depths of despair” will not last.  Anne questions this idea, prays about it, and takes it to heart, clinging to it in times of trouble.  Anne thinks the line is Scripture; it’s actually Robert Browning.  Still, there’s truth in it.  God is on his throne; he is in control of all that is, both seen and unseen.  Yes, it’s easy to look around at the world and find many things that are not “right” with it.  Yet we don’t always see as He does (more on that later); we have to live in the trust that God is smarter than we are.

Message Two comes from Matthew, Marilla’s bachelor brother.  He and Marilla are discussing whether to take Anne into their home.  Marilla asks, “What good would she be to us?” and Matthew answers, “We might be some good to her.”  This is a pivotal moment in the lives of these people.  Matthew and Marilla are basically good, God-fearing folk whose lives have been focused on meeting their own needs.  They sent for an orphan boy because they needed someone who could help the aging Matthew run the farm.  Instead they got Anne, who is useless to their original purpose.  By choosing to care for someone who had no objective value to them, Matthew and Marilla opened themselves up to a life of depth and richness they could never have imagined.  For most of their lives, they had existed.  By caring for someone else, God taught them to live.

Yep…good message.

The third line comes from Anne herself.  Remember, this is a girl who hears voices, bursts into song at random moments, and carries on a relationship with her own reflection in the mirror.  Her philosophies of life must be weighed carefully before being accepted. Obviously a girl of much imagination, Anne sings a line that perhaps encapsulates the entire show:

Imagine what the world may be beyond what we can see.

Anne comes into our world renaming things…including herself.  She sees herself as more than the simple name Anne can hold, so she becomes Cordelia.  The same goes for The Lake of Shining Waters, and The White Way of Delight.  As she moves through Avonlea, she transforms it, and its people, into something beyond the ordinary.

The prophet Elisha was once surrounded by an army of the enemy.  Elisha’s servant could not understand why Elisha wasn’t panicking.  The man of God prayed for his servant, and God opened the servant’s eyes to see “The hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

Imagine what the world may be beyond what we can see.

Anne’s gift is an ability to see beyond the ordinary.  She shares that gift, or forces it upon, everyone she meets.  Including her audience.

So, do you trust that God is in his heaven?

Are you willing to place the needs of others before your own?

Have you asked God to allow you to see, “Beyond what you can see?”

Worthy messages.

A worthy tale.