Days Of Future Past

On Saturday, as an early birthday treat, I got to see "X-Men: Days of Future Past". Terrific film - and, as you might expect, it's got me thinking...

The plot of the film was inspired by the 1981 Uncanny X-Men storyline "Days of Future Past" by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, which I clearly remember reading when it first came out!

I can't say I ever thought I would be sitting watching a big screen film version of that particular X-Men story with my wife and two children 33 years later. At the time the comic was first published this cinema wasn't even built ... at that time the site was quite an unremarkable chalk quarry. Conclusion: Life doesn't work out the way you think it will.

Winston Churchill once said, "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see". Another quotation states "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana). However, I sometimes find that reviewing the past can be terribly difficult. Memories are funny things. I can struggle recalling the fine details about something that happened just last week. And yet, a scrap of paper from 30 years ago, a song, even a smell, can instantly take you back years in the past; trigger emotions that you thought were long dead and buried. I've been time-travelling a little bit myself lately (as I blogged earlier). And it's revealed to me how much has changed... 

As a science fiction fan, I am frequently introduced to another author's vision of the future. Some futures sound very appealing; others, less so. But a dystopian future isn't inevitable! And that goes for our individual futures, too....

We often think we cannot do anything in the present to change our current circumstances. On the contrary. The future is unwritten - thus, you can change it. Or work to improve the future of others. Even without a time machine (or whatever power Kitty was using in the X-Men movie)...

It all depends on the present. On what you do to change things now. On who you want to serve...

James 4:13-16 (ESV)
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.