And neither did those waiting for the promised Savior 2,000 years ago. Public Domain image from Wikkimedia Commons.
Hero boy polar express voice full#
The irony is that Hero Boy has been “railroaded”, but the train is terribly loud, and huge, and full of real light. Have the wool pulled over your eyes…You don’t want to be taken for a ride. “But you don’t want to be bamboozled….You don’t want to be conned or duped. “I want to believe…but…” stammers Hero Boy. “What exactly is your persuasion…?” answers the Hobo. “Are we really going to the North Pole?” asks Hero Boy. The Hobo cranks out an almost familiar tune on a battered instrument. As he follows them he stumbles upon a Hobo and his camp on the roof of one of the cars. He finds that the Conductor and The Girl are walking on the top of the train. A few seconds later Hero Boy finds the ticket and runs to the back of the train to return it. “He’s going to throw her off the train,” says one of the children with wide eyes. She is escorted by the Conductor out of the car.
Almost, but not quite.Īt one point, Hero Boy accidentally loses The Girl’s ticket. When the answer does come, it is so subtle you could almost miss it.
Hero Boy asks this question of The Girl several times and each time receives no answer. Once aboard, Hero Boy proceeds to ask the other children on board if they think they’re really going to the North Pole. “All Aboard!” calls the Conductor.Īfter a moment of hesitation, he gets on the train. Parked on his street is an express train! Then the room begins to rattle and a cheery whistle calls. He crawls back into bed ready to give up. When he looks up the North Pole in his encyclopedia, big bold letters stand up from the page. Similarly, the Hero Boy has collected a stash of evidence against Santa. Science encourages us to pack up God with Santa and the Tooth Fairy when we’ve grown into “the real world.” After all, we’ve probed the heavens and found nothing but endless, inhospitable space. There are certainly people today who think that way. I wonder if there were some shepherds who started to believe that God wasn’t real or wasn’t interested in humanity any more. And some nights, we can taste what that feels like. For 400 years shepherds tended flocks in the fields outside Bethlehem as empires rose and fell, and generations of loved ones died, and this old broken world turned, and God was silent. Between the events in the Old Testament and those in the New are 400 years of silence. The Bible is divided into two parts: and Old Testament-full of God’s promises that He would send his Son to fix the pain and suffering of this old, broken world-and a New Testament, full to bursting with the glorious fulfillment of those promises. Sometimes it seems like He has been silent too long. Like every child at on Christmas Eve, like those Christmas shepherds in Bethlehem’s cold fields, we’re waiting for the voice of God. Our hearts tingled with great excitement or churned with dread or pain. “I lay in my bed,” he says in the opening narration, “waiting for a sound…I thought I might never hear.” Immediately, we in the audience, are transported in our minds to similar nights when we lay awake. The Polar Express tells the story of a young boy, (called “Hero Boy” in the book by the same name.) He asks the same question. To them, God is Santa Claus: invisible, supposedly good, mostly mythical, childish, seasonal, and unreachable. This past year I have had the opportunity to have conversations with several people about my Christian faith, and why I believe in the existence of God. Since we’ve been talking about questions lately, I’ve seen this question in The Polar Express in a whole new light.
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