I have been fortunate to see the movie “The 100 Foot Journey” not once but twice. I liked it so much the first time I went back. It is a lovely story with good actors taking the leading roles (seriously, how could you not like a movie with Helen Mirren in it?) and the cinematography is beautiful. It is, for the most part, set in competing restaurants and the story line revolves around food. It is hard to come out without being hungry!
There is a sense of destiny in the movie. The father, leaving his homeland due to political reasons, treks across Europe with his family searching for the place where they should stop. He says he will know it is the right place when they get there. He finds their place in France when the brakes in their vehicle fail and they careen off the road. He says to his children, “Brakes break for a reason.” and therefore, he decides that this is where their travelling will end. Later in the movie as the love story unfolds … you knew there had to be a love story … the son repeats this line to his girlfriend, “Brakes break for a reason.”
I have been thinking a lot about that ever since. Not just the movie but the interplay between destiny, coincidence and God. I know people who do not talk about coincidence – they call such moments “god-incidence” meaning God is in the moment that seems so unlikely. Do things happen for a reason? Or do we interpret events so that we can find good or evil in them? I am not sure I have the answer to that. Some days I am firmly convinced that whatever happened was meant to be and brought me to a place of new discovery. Other times I am equally convinced about the randomness of life. As a person of faith I believe that God is part of my life in such an interconnected way that everything I do is infused with God and yet I must admit there are times when I feel abandoned. There are times when things happen and it feels like pure divine intervention and there are other times when it feels very accidental. That said, I have a faith that shapes my life and my activity is governed by a belief that God is part of my every decision. So, if “brakes break for a reason” it is within the breaking that I can draw upon faith in God to see me through.
