What’s the weirdest movie you’ve ever watched?
I can’t recall ever watching a truly weird movie—not because memory fails me, but because no Twilight Zone episode could be stranger than the bizarre, real world.
Mainstream films tend to portray aspiring yet unrealistic lives through fiction—you dream of who you are not, of what you don’t have. Other films, however, subvert logic, deepen absurdity, or serve as a funnel for spectators of a similar nature.
Weird characters are not unique to fiction—they exist just an arm’s length away. The unexpected or eccentric can upend a life and topple hope in a split second.
Today, during my round of volunteer hospital visits, there she was—hiding in the corner, half covered by a curtain, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, sitting emotionless. She is a patient in agonizing pain from three herniated discs. She exclaimed in complete shock and acute pain, asking how this could possibly have happened to her.
She finds it weird because there were no signs, no pre-existing conditions, no warning. She felt hopeless, trapped, deeply depressed.
Surgery seems the best and fastest treatment—yet she faces a fairy-like wait on a six-year line-up. Private surgery is far out of reach—an astronaut’s fee she cannot afford. Her silent crying is heard: “Why am I cast in the weirdest play?”
The weirdest of the weirdness is me—a fellow herniated-disc sufferer who appeared before her suddenly, shared my authentic experience, and shared my faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord of Life. After an hour of her simmering and my comforting voice, she was, by grace, restored—laying her hope on physiotherapy to reduce the pain while she awaits surgery.
What the patient didn’t realise was that she was not “picked” for the play; she drove herself into it subconsciously. Together we traced back what she had done prior to the pain emerging. She became aware it could be due to her attempt to pull a heavy pressure-relief mattress a few days earlier. The mystery was solved—a lesson for us all: things don’t just happen for no reason.
May the patient’s prayer for the Lord’s healing be answered. May her meeting with the Lord begin the truth in her life. And may she bear witness to the grace bestowed upon her, as a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men (1 Corinthians 4:9).
Yet living on earth, everyone plays dual roles—an audience member and an actor. For either role, I pray for the discernment of wisdom in life.
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