Sights & Sounds Theater

Finally, now I have seen it. Last night we went to the Sights and Sounds Theater in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My wife who saw Phantom of the Opera and our friend who has seen many Broadway shows, says this one blows the rest away.

It was incredible! The stage wraps around and up the sides of the auditorium, the sets are enormous at forty feet tall with lights and animatronics. Even up into the ceiling and across the ceiling to the back of the auditorium, there are things to see. The actors come in from the sky, across the ceiling, from the back of the auditorium, from the side along the stages there, anywhere!

I was impressed driving in, the size of the place and the number of people there. We drove right in, parked in the first handicap spot from the building! Our friend we took with us is handicap. We got right in the door and in the queue for our section and within ten minutes right to our seats.

I asked an usher where I should park the wheelchair and she asked me for a ticket!? She wanted to know where to bring the wheelchair back to at the end of the show. There are no bad seats, but I would suggest seats towards the middle (front to back) to be able to take in all of the stage in your peripheral vision.

If you go, keeping looking all around, not just at the stage! If you have teens, they will want to re-enact the angels, swooping down the aisles and up onto the stage with roller sneakers!

Warning plot spoilers ahead! Of course if you've already read the book, then don't sweat it. Seriously, if you're actually planning to see, just go and see it, don't read about it.

We saw the "In the Beginning". It starts at Genesis 1:1 with the angels assembled watching God create as the narrative in the Bible tells us. Six days of creation and then a day of rest.
Technical Note: Although Adam and Eve were created naked and were naked, they did a fantastic job of working around that with them clothed in God's glory. Skin colored body suits can do amazing things when combined with special lighting and gauze-like white robes.

The story continues on through God's love for man, God creating a helper for Adam, a wedding (the first wedding), Satan's rebellion, Adam and Eve's fall, their banishment from the garden, their children (43 in the play!) and their family's rebellion, Cain and Nod and the siblings that went with Nod. The story picks up again at the end of Adam's life when he sees a vision of him as the father of all people, and then goes to paradise to be with his Creator. Eve is heartbroken, that she who sinned first, did not die first. Gabriel comforts her with reminding her of God's plan that he himself doesn't really understand completely.

"In the Beginning" ends with the next beginning, the old world passes away and the new heaven and new earth comes, Eden is restored and wedding feast of the Lamb is proclaimed, the new Jerusalem comes for us to dwell in.

The story of God's love and sacrifice so that we could love Him willingly is beyond compare in human history. The expanse of the infinite captured in the opening is stunning. The breadth of time the play encompasses all the breadth of human history in three hours, from the beginning of time to the end of time, when we shall all live eternal and reign with God.

Life Size Tabernacle!

It's been far to long to post another blog. We've not had the time over the last two months.

Yesterday we went down to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to visit the Life Size model of the Tabernacle (from Exodus). It was much smaller than I had imagined as a Sunday School student. The Mennonites have done a nice job putting it together. It is all full scale, from the silhouettes to the furniture. The tabernacle is inside a building, but the courtyard is outside. The arrangement might make it hard for some people to visualize how small it really was. It would fit inside a full size gymnasium, easily. The docent was well spoken and well articulated in explaining the construction of the (real) tabernacle and all its furniture. If you've never heard the Good News of Jesus, you'll hear it!

The part I was really interested in was the presentation the Mennonites have put together on who the Amish are and what they believe.

The Amish and the Mennonite come from the same movement and religiously they are close cousins from the Anabaptist movement that we should be baptized when we can account for our own actions, not when we are born physically, so as to be counted as a church member. This is also to distinguish the Anabaptist from the Banabaptist whose ideology allows them to slip away from the truth and not find their way to heaven.

I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation on the Amish and let me tell you they do have a great sense of humor in dealing with us- the Outsiders, at least those of us who may be rude and intrusive in wanting to know and understand their way of life.

I saw a number of great concepts that correlate into modern life and the problems that we face in society, the breakdown of family, the bankruptcy of Social Security, and the (probable) over diagnosis of ADHD, autism and depression in children and adults. In another blog, I'll pick up these issues for a longer discussion.