-When Neo is at his computer, trying to learn more about what the Matrix is by searching for Morpheus, it made me think about how we are all searching for something. I believe that there is something embedded deep within us that tells us there is more out there, more than what we can see, hear, or touch. Something beyond what we can imagine. Some might call it nirvana, or enlightenment. I believe that it’s God. Why? Because when we are searching for that elusive something, the only reason we have that longing in the first place is because God put it there. He desires relationship with us, and he designed us to desire it too, and we will never be truly satisfied with anything else. We as humans will always be incomplete without God, and we will always long to be filled by Him, even if we don’t know what we are longing for.

In the Chronicles of Narnia book The Silver Chair, by CS Lewis, Jill is talking to Eustace, the Pevensies’ cousin, who has already had an adventure in Narnia. Jill is willing to try and seek Aslan out with Eustace, even though she doesn’t know who Aslan is or anything about him. But she has seen the change that has occurred in Eustace, and knows, like Neo, that there is “something more” out there, something that, even as she desires it, is also calling to her.

The good news is that our searching is not in vain. Trinity tells Neo that “the answer will find him, if he wants it to”.

-When Neo is on the phone with Morpheus for the first time, I was thinking how cool it must be when you find out the person you’ve been tirelessly searching for for years suddenly calls you out of the blue and confesses that he also has been searching for you? Picture God, imagine that you’d been searching and seeking after God for so long, desperate to find Him, to find fullness of life and satisfaction in Him, and He smiles and says, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, too.” Because this is in fact what He does!

-I thought it interesting that during the scene where Neo is being interrogated by the Agents, they make his mouth disappear. I mean, I’m sure they aren’t bothered by Neo’s screams, and no one else around would probably care, either. If they just wanted to immobilize him, they could have made him pass out, or paralyze him. If they wanted to disorient him, they could have taken his ears, or his eyes. If they wanted to scare him, they could have changed their forms to something more monstrous. No, the Agents chose to take his mouth, and therefore his voice…which is exactly the same thing the enemy tries to do to us every day.

The mouth is how we express ourselves, it is where our voice comes from. The enemy does not want us to express ourselves, he wants to silence us, to stifle us. If he can take away our means of expressing ourselves, and how we communicate with each other, the consequences are crippling. (And I’m not just talking about using only our lips and vocal cords here, communication goes far beyond those fleshly things. Remember, the machines kept the humans separated from each other, isolated and “asleep” in their pods, so that not even body language was an option.)

If we can’t communicate with each other, we are truly alone. We can’t express love, we can’t give words of comfort, or healing. We can’t forgive. We can’t share wisdom, we can’t give warning. And perhaps most importantly, we can’t speak truth against the enemy’s lies. There is power in declaration, as we will see later in the movie.

The mouth is also how we nourish ourselves, take in water and food. If the enemy takes away our ability to sustain ourselves, either with food, or, to think on a more spiritual plane, the word of God which feeds our spirits, how long would we survive? Not long.

-”You’ve been down that road. You know what it holds,” and “You take the blue pill, you go home, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

How many of us have come to that crossroads in our lives, where we have to choose between the known and the unknown? Allen Arnold calls this choosing between Story 1 and Story 2. Story 2 is “safe”. It’s a road that is familiar, one that we know. But Story 1 is the “Eden” option, the great unknown. We have no idea what we will meet on that road, much less what we will find at the end of it, but we know that is the road upon which God invites us to walk with Him. In his book The Eden Option, Allen asks us, which story would you like to see a documentary made of? The Story 2 where we take the blue pill, and go home, make some mac and cheese, binge Netflix and chill, and fall asleep on the couch? Or Story 1 where we take the red pill, go down the rabbit hole, and discover whole new worlds we had no idea even existed? It’s a great step of faith to choose Story 1, for sure. Story 2 reminds us that we have bills to pay, and laundry to be done, and desks to be at by 9am every morning. Story 2 is the responsible choice. But I doubt The Matrix would have been as popular if Neo took the blue pill, went home, ordered pizza and watched Seinfeld reruns.

-When I saw Neo, “asleep” in his pod, the thought came to me of what a waste it was. We were made for so much more. We were given muscles to use, to move and lift and run and jump and fight! We were never born to lie unmoving our entire lives.