Monday Meanderings - 4.23.2018

The local PBS station aired Ben-Hur the other night - the venerable, much-decorated movie from way back in 1959. Barb tuned in at about the midway point (the movie is 3 1/2 hours long) and we watched for a while, then taped the rest for an earlier viewing slot.

I'm fairly certain that my children - and certainly not my grandchildren - have ever seen this movie. And that's a shame. With a budget of $15.175 million - a staggering sum in that day - and a cast of more than 10,000 extras, not to mention 200 camels and 2,500 horses used in the shooting of the film, the film defined the term Block Buster. It garnered 11 Academy Awards and is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made and was elected for preservation by the Library of Congress for being a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" motion picture. Phew.

As a freshman in college, I was so impressed with this film that I convinced my parents to drive 60 miles to Abilene one evening to see this movie. If you knew my parents, you would know how remarkable this was.

I read the book back in high school, and it is perhaps a more remarkable story than the movie. Written by a former Union Army General while he was whiling away a couple of years as Governor of New Mexico, Lew Wallis did not profess to be a Christian himself, but his book is considered to be the "most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century."