(MILD SPOILERS AHEAD!) When I think of summer, my mind immediately turns to one of the defining seasons of my “nerd life”… the summer blockbuster movie season. For years, all of the movies that I was eagerly anticipating would finally come out in theaters during that glorious cinematic window of time between May and September… superhero movies, epic space sagas, animated features, and all of the high-action, low-plot spectacles that Hollywood could generate. If a movie featured giant robots, space aliens, massive explosions, or Arnold Schwarzenegger then you KNEW it was coming out in the summertime (and if we were lucky, it would feature all of the above). And thanks to the modern renaissance occurring in the comic book movie realm, as a viewing audience we have received DOZENS of super-hero movies that I would have never believed were possible, with previously lesser-known characters such as the Guardians of the Galaxy and Shazam getting the opportunity to share the screen with proven icons such as the Avengers and the Justice League (we won’t mention Green Lantern here. It still hurts too much). But within all of the vast amount of “cinematic universes” we are currently enjoying that encompasses everything from comic book heroes, Star Wars, Transformers, Godzilla, and just about any other franchise that has the ability to print money, there is still room for these movies to fail. And with a current estimated loss of $200 million dollars at the time of this writing, “The Flash” seems poised to go down in history as one of the largest box office bombs of all time… and I want to figure out why.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way… the movie itself is not a bad piece of cinema for its’ genre. It certainly isn’t any worse than other similar releases that have fared much better financially, with an average audience score of 83% positive. And considering this movie featured the MUCH-anticipated return of Michael Keaton and his first (and perhaps last) step back into Batman’s boots in thirty years, this movie should have succeeded for a plethora of reasons. The Flash movie had a lot going for it… a full-budgeted cinematic take on the Flashpoint story arc, Michael Keaton as Batman, multiple confirmed superhero cameos, a connection to the beloved DC Snyder-Verse series of movies, MICHAEL KEATON AS BATMAN, one of our final chances to say goodbye to the first iteration of DC’s cinematic Justice League, and also MICHAEL KEATON came back as BATMAN. So how did a movie that should have sped past all of its’ rivals end up failing to stick the landing? The blame for this does not lay at the feet of the content of the movie… that much is certain. And while there may be complicated feelings for the audience towards the studio that released the film, the actors within the film, or the actors who are NOT in the film, the reality is that movies featuring those exact same challenges succeed both critically and commercially all of the time. No, the reason that this movie doesn’t even appear to be on track to match the performance of Black Adam’s global receipts has a lot less to do with what the movie CONTAINED, and a lot more to do with what it was MISSING… a feeling that the story it contained had any future significance.

In the midst of all of the external drama surrounding The Flash movie came a major announcement… a new leader (James Gunn) would be taking over the new DC Cinematic Universe, fresh off of his successful work with several other comic book licenses for both DC and Marvel. And with this reveal came the news that would doom The Flash movie as well as the remainder of what DC was currently building around the first incarnation of their cinematic Justice League… Gunn is rebooting their franchises, recasting the characters, and building a new continuity similar to the highly successful approach taking by their competition at Marvel Studios. The inter-connectivity between even seemingly unrelated franchises has made almost every Marvel television and movie offering into must-see viewing for their fanbase, because each release has the potential to impact the others… something DC and their disconnected stable of shows and movies has lacked. But while this news means that DC fans may finally have a cinematic universe of their own to look forward to, it also spelled certain doom for the unreleased movies that had been generated prior to this decision. The Batgirl movie was outright cancelled, The Flash movie is poised to go down in history for all of the wrong reasons, and I have a bad feeling that the Aquaman sequel will need some serious help to avoid a similar fate.

Once we knew that these characters were all going to be replaced and the stories they were telling would NOT be connected to this new future, it kind of made it difficult to care about the movie beyond the sheer popcorn value of watching it. The urgency to see it in theaters diminished because we all knew deep down that this story doesn’t actually MATTER anymore… we are about to see a new Superman, a new Batman, a new Justice League, and that means we will be getting a new Flash. And because of that knowledge, the stakes for THIS incarnation of the Flash were just lowered… regardless of who wins, loses, lives, or dies, it won’t truly matter in the upcoming reboot of this franchise. And that was why events in the Marvel Cinematic Universe like the death of Iron Man or the sacrifice of Black Widow had resonance in those movies that truly touched us at our core… because we knew that these fictional events MATTERED and would continue to have a ripple effect far beyond those moments. Tony Stark was NOT coming back… Natasha had finally cleared her ledger… and stories such as the ongoing struggles of Peter Parker in his own series of Spider-Man movies or Hawkeye in his small-screen streaming adventures would be forever impacted by these losses.

Whether we believe something has resonance beyond our current moment completely changes the way we process it, absorb it, and react to it… and in the shadow of The Flash’s failure to connect with a worldwide audience lies a critical truth that we are all challenged with each day. Do we truly understand the impact of the moments we are currently living in and their connection to the bigger picture? For an even MORE important and cautionary tale of failing to recognize a “mere momentary lapse in judgment” as a life-altering event, let us look at one of the most painful passages of Scripture in the Bible… a misstep that would completely change the future of Moses, the man who successfully stood up to a global dictator but was defeated by one emotionally charged moment that he could never take back.

Numbers 20:2-12 Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron. And the people contended with Moses and spoke, saying: “If only we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! Why have you brought up the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink.” So Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, and they fell on their faces. And the glory of the Lord appeared to them. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water; thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock, and give drink to the congregation and their animals.” So Moses took the rod from before the Lord as He commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”

The interesting subtext to this is that in a previous and similar circumstance, the Lord had instructed Moses to provide water in the desert by striking a rock (Exodus 17:1-7)… but in this specific moment, Moses was given a different and VERY specific command to SPEAK to the rock to receive the answer to his prayers. The reason why Moses was given different guidance could be debated until the end of time, but the fact is that he was given the direction to talk to the rock and he struck it twice instead. And in that moment, Moses’s future was irrevocably changed as his prayer WAS answered by the Lord and water still flowed from that rock… but with it came the consequence that Moses would never personally enter the Promised Land. Moses would spend his final breath gazing out at the landscape that he had been traveling towards for forty years (Deuteronomy 34:1-4), but because he didn’t recognize the resonance of the moment that he was standing in, he never actually entered it. He didn’t see how that one decision connected to his future… and because of that, he made a choice that altered the course of history, leaving him on the outside looking in.

If Moses had known the importance of that moment when it was occurring, I have a feeling he would have talked to that rock ALL DAY LONG if that is what it took to get water to come out. But he didn’t know until the moment was passed… and too many times throughout the Bible we find people who were existing in a perishable moment of time that would forever define them, but they didn’t recognize the moment for what it was. If Pilate had truly understood the defining moment he was experiencing with Jesus and heeded the warnings of his wife (Matthew 27), he would have known that no amount of hand-washing would ever cleanse him from his infamous place in history. If the people had recognized who John the Baptist really was, then they would have understood the times they were living in and that the answer to their prayers was literally in their midst (Matthew 17:10-13). If those Jesus had come to save had realized the moment they were standing in, they wouldn’t have called to crucify him mere days after they celebrated His arrival (Luke 19:41-45). But, in a similar manner to how the Flash movie seems to exist in a disconnected state to the future of that cinematic universe, each of these groups of people treated the circumstances they were currently inhabiting as inconsequential… they didn’t see any lasting resonance of the decisions they were making, and as a result these moments passed them by forever.

Matthew 17:10-13 And His disciples asked Him, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” And He answered and said, “Elijah is coming and will restore all things; but I say to you that Elijah already came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wanted. So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that He had spoken to them about John the Baptist.

Luke 19:41-45 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

The sad irony about the Flash movie is that the story was all about “Flashpoint”… the attempt to reverse a singular, painful, canon moment in the history of the character that caused this previously ordinary individual to become the superhero known as “The Flash”. In a desperate attempt to change the past, the Flash races back in time to alter this event… but in every comic, television, and now cinematic version of this character, the reality is that this moment can NOT be changed. The entire DC multiverse, along with the MCU, is punctuated with these unalterable timeline events that represent a moment containing MASSIVE repercussions… some positive, some negative, and ALL unable to be modified once they have been etched into the foundation of their respective worlds. And in our lives, if we fail to recognize these moments and the significance that they hold, we will find ourselves locked into a similarly frustrating story of what “might have been”, living the rest of our lives in a permanent state of “What If?” or “If Only”… an imaginary multiverse where we made a different, better decision and saw our lives unfold in a manner more to our liking. Like me, perhaps you made decisions you thought were “small” in the moment, unaware that they would have the life-altering consequences that they did. Fortunately, hope remains for each of us… not in going back to the past, but through fully facing our future with a different mindset than what got us into this mess in the first place.

Like Moses, I have made more than my fair share of “canon-defining” mistakes in life… moments that I failed to recognize until they were too late as divergences in the timeline of my life. Seemingly small, passing flickers of thoughts, emotions, and actions that turned out to alter the course of my life and the lives of others… some for the positive, and many that were not. And once these decisions were made, they resulted in irreversible outcomes that I could not change no matter how much I tried (like Pilate) to wash my hands of them. This knowledge should not lead any of us to despair… they do not define us, and they now exist as part of the unique tapestry that led us to the very cross that saved each of us (2 Corinthians 7:10). But this awareness should also serve to reinforce our mindfulness on the importance of these rock-striking decisions that lie ahead of us and have yet to occur… these seemingly small and inconsequential moments that can leave us (like Moses) gazing longingly at a “Promised Land” that we can no longer enter. And they tend to happen “in a flash”…

When the Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, He said “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” Fortunately for her, she did not let this perishable moment slip through her fingers… she didn’t fully understand it at the time, but this was her “moment of visitation”. It was her one shot… a life-altering moment in her timeline, and she grabbed hold of it in a way that not only changed her life but saved numerous lives in her city as well. And in the comparison of these events, we see a clear pattern emerge… no matter what we have done or how far we have fallen, the Lord will bring us to these places of decision. But they often do not appear to be more than just everyday moments in our lives… and this very familiarity will allow us to miss their importance if we are not paying attention. Moses tried to produce the water by striking the rock, Pilate tried to use the water in a fruitless effort to cleanse his blood-stained hands, but only this Samaritan woman recognized the water for what it was and drank fully from the well… it was a seemingly small act of obedience that was taken for granted by those who didn’t truly see what that action represented in that moment until it was too late.

The Flash was doomed to failure at the box office as soon as it was made crystal clear by the studio behind it that the movie would not be connected to the larger narrative that was being told. And once this story was disconnected from any sense of lasting value or purpose, even the best stunt-casting on the planet could not bring relevance to the tale it contained. If we knew that these adventures were leading into the larger places that the DCU was going, I have a feeling that the reception would have been MUCH different… and if this movie represented the beginning of the new Justice League DCU continuity instead of a final curtain call for these characters, it would have had a much better chance of recouping its’ massive budget. We simply didn’t believe that anything that was happening on screen MATTERED… and the movie was met with apathy by the viewing audience as a result. And the same goes for the decisions that we are making in our real-world lives each and every day… do we truly believe that each decision we make will have lasting ramifications in the lives that we are impacting? Do we prayerfully approach our lives with the understanding that even seemingly small moments will have eternal resonance beyond our comprehension? Do we look at these rocks in front of us that represent our current dilemmas with the realization that how we react to their presence may alter the course of not only our lives, but countless others as well? Do we truly recognize the relevance of the moment we are currently living in and approach each interaction with the mind of Christ as our north star? The decisions we choose to make today MATTERS… to ourselves and in the lives of others who may never even meet on this side of eternity. What we say, how we act, what we post, how we treat others, and every part of what we do either serves the Lord’s will and purpose or undermines them. There are no inconsequential moments in our lives… only those whose impact we have failed to comprehend. With that in mind, how then should we choose to live? It ALL matters – so let’s run our race today with the knowledge that we cannot alter the path behind us, but we CAN change what lies before us… one decision made in accordance with the Lord’s will at a time (Jeremiah 33:3). And with our daily awareness of the eternal implications of every choice we make, we can run the way He designed us to… hand in hand with Him, ever aware of the larger plan we are connected to in Him.

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