I don’t know about you, but I grew up a Superhero fan (thanks Mom & Dad), and to this day love the idea of supernatural heroes. So when this summers blockbusters “The Avengers” & ” The Dark Knight Rises” were in theaters so was I. I feel like a kid watching the Hulk and Thor battle for the safety of the world, something in me soars watching Batman come to aid of Gotham yet again and secretly I walk out of the theater pretending that I am one of them with my secret identity being dad to three and McDonalds frequenter. There’s something inside me that longs to be the one wearing the cape, having the whole fate of the world on my shoulders. To be a part of some grand adventure that transcends my seemingly insignificant existence, and I finally know why. It’s what I was created for. No, I wasn’t given x-ray vision or a super soldier serum, but I was created in the midst of an epic adventure that is playing out unbeknownst to most of us. The grand adventure of eternity, the redemption of the world. Hear me out, I can explain to you my logic in hopefully three easy parts.

Your DNA.

Without going into all the different reasons comic book heroes are heroes I want to examine one of the more common reasons. Let’s take the Hulk for existence (we could use almost any Marvel hero, especially any X-men), Dr. Banner basically tests a formula he was developing on himself which modifies his DNA causing him to turn into a giant green monster any time his pulse rate gets to high. It was the change to his DNA that caused him to become “the hero” he is. Spiderman; bite by a radioactive spider. The fantastic four; after exposure to cosmic rays during a scientific mission to outer space. All the mutants in the X-men universe were born with “special” DNA. Bottom line, these heroes are simply wired for a different type of existence. Guess what? So are we. Check it out, Solomon tells us in Eccleisastes 3:11:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Clearly theres a lot in here, but for our purpose lets focus on the element of our DNA that I bet you didn’t realize you had. “he has put eternity into man’s heart,” in other words there is a part of you down deep on some subconscious level that knows that you were created to live forever. So, you have eternity planted in your hearts by God and as a result there’s this knowledge that things aren’t the way they were intended to be. That unsettling feeling, that desire for more, the part of the movie world that resonates in my soul is mentioned by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans.

“22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Romans 8:22-23

Since the fall of humanity in the garden in Genesis 3, all of creation has been fractured and as a result is groaning, longing, waiting to be made right again. It’s waiting for the renewal of all creation, and Paul says “not only creation, but we ourselves”. We too are groaning, waiting, longing to be made right. We have eternity on our hearts and a sinful fractured world around us, our soul remembers what it was like to be whole with God and it yearns to be there. It’s our DNA that is setting up this call into adventure. You have actually been created for it, the question now is what is it, and will you become a part of it.