The Leper Colony.

Greetings,

 There was a term 'leper colony' which reminded me of the 1949 movie 

 "Twelve O' Clock High."  It was the scene where General Savage

(Gregory Peck) calls air executive officer Lt. Colonel Gately

(Hugh Marlowe) into his office and harshly reprimands him for

dereliction of duty, reduces him to an aircraft commander and orders

him to paint the name "Leper Colony" on the nose of his plane.

Savage tells Gately the reason for the name and says that Gately

would get every deadbeat in the outfit (the 918th Bomber Group). 

 e.g. A navigator who couldn't find the rest room, and a bombardier

who couldn't put a fork to his plate.

 Later, when Gately inspects his plane for a training run, he assembles

his flight crew together to inform them the reason for the unfavorable

nickname given to his plane and crew and why the men of his crew

were assigned to him.  He then adds with, "Well, how do you like it?

Well you'll like it a lot less the first mistake you make! We've got a 

blowtorch turned our way and nobody's going to shove me into it!

Is that clear?"

I thought about those two scenes in that old classic film about a

World War II bomber group and I started thinking that there was

more to General Frank Savage's decision of demoting his air exec

to an aircraft commander and giving him the deadbeats of the bomber

group. While the general's decision was for disciplinary reasons as 

Savage made that very clear to Lt. Col. Ben Gately,  I wonder and

it's a good guess that Savage did it also to reform the men that were

assigned to Gately. I had that idea when Gately was briefing his crew

in the latter scene. He did look like a determined leader.

 It turns out Gately was later reinstated after being injured when he

had to ditch his plane in the English Channel after a mission and I 

noticed the next B-17 he flew had a different name. He even lead

the entire group on a bombing run when Savage fell ill.  

 Yes, General Savage did indeed have a bigger plan, for Gately

as well as his crew.  

I thought about the scenes from said movie and read in the New

Testament of the Bible the kind of people God chooses, and many

of them were far from perfect, either physically or mentally. But God

had a bigger plan, much like General Savage did for Ben Gately and

his crew of misfits in the movie Twelve O'Clock High.

 In Old Testament times you really had to abide by God's 

commandments to the letter. And the times I spent reading

through the OT book of Leviticus, I saw that keeping the

Lord's ordinances and statutes along with peace and sin

offerings was indeed hard work. Back then you really did 

have to do good  works to stay right with God. And on

making peace and sin offerings?  That not only was labor

intensive, but no doubt messy and smelly.

 And the thing with OT sacrifices for sin, was that the sacrifices

were no doubt constant because if you broke one of God's

commandments you broke them all.  There had to be very few

who could ever be so righteous as to not break even one of

the Ten Commandments.  Worse, if one made no offering for his

sin he was cut off if he wasn't stoned to death. 

 But it gets better.  For the Lord already had a plan in mind even

in the OT times and in fact there is mention of Jesus in the Old

Testament.

When Jesus came on the scene as written in the four Gospels, he

chose as His disciples those that were least esteemed in society;

those who didn't by Hebrew standards then be worthy of God's

servants.  While they were not physically handicapped nor had

any other physical defects to man these were by nature unholy

men. The Jewish leaders of the time may as well considered them

a leper colony as they saw them unworthy.  Jesus also dined with

tax collectors, and they were so despised by Hebrew society as

they worked with the Roman government in collecting taxes.

Matthew was himself a tax collector whom Jesus chose as one

of His twelve disciples, not to mention writing the first of the four

Gospels with the first in his namesake. 

 The Pharisees saw what Jesus was doing and complained that

He was eating with tax collectors and sinners, which to them was

an abomination.  But Jesus just said to them,  "Those that are

whole do not need a physician , but those that are sick. But

you go and learn what that means, I will have mercy and not

sacrifice: for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners

to repentance."  (Matthew 9:12-13)

On the surface it looked as if Jesus was doing unrighteousness in the

eyes of man when He was seen fellowshipping with those least esteemed

by men.  But none of them could see the bigger picture, much the same

way Ben Gately could not see the bigger picture when General Savage

assigned him the undesireables of the 918th Bomb Group.  While Gately

saw his demotion as punishment, Savage used it for a bigger purpose.

Even though Savage rebuked Gately for dereliction of duty, he also saw

in him good leadership material, and used the punishment as a way for

Gately to mold and shape the undesireables assigned to him as his bomber

crew.

 God was using those least esteemed in society's eyes to fulfill a bigger plan,

to make disciples of men to spread the word to all nations. And the Lord
came down in the likeness of man to be among men. None of us would have
ever known Jesus if it weren't for those "least esteemed" men He chose that
helped to fulfill His ministry.  Jesus said to Peter,  "Follow me, and I will
make you fishers of men."  (Matthew 4:19)

 From what it might have looked like to one who ever saw the movie Twelve
O' Clock High, it looked and sounded as if  Gregory Peck's character hated
Hugh Marlowe's character and tells him as much, but unbeknownst to the
Gately character, his CO saw something better in him.
 God may at times chasten us, but He also sees something in us that we ourselves
can't even see, let alone people outside us. Does God use deadbeats? My answer
is yes. Jesus says to come as you are. Is there anything righteous about a deadbeat?
No there isn't, but like Jesus said, He didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance. He even let the maimed , the feeble, the mentally deranged and
the demon-possessed come to Him and He healed them all. (Matthew 4:24)

The world may see us as castaways, or as Gregory Peck's character put it, a
"leper colony" but Jesus sees a child of God.


Have a blessed day.