Rent

I watched this movie last night called Rent, it is a modern day version of the opera called La Boehm. God broke my heart with this movie. It’s about these people, there is Rodger who is this young guy who loves to play guitar, his roommate Mark, who is making a documentary of the goings on in New York. A girl named Mimi, who is a 19 year old stripper who is heavy into drugs, she lives in the apartment downstairs from Mark and Rodger. Then there is Maureen who used to be Mark’s girlfriend, but she left Mark for a lawyer named Joanne. Then there is a guy named Tom , who gets beat up right off the bat, and also has AIDS, then there is a guy named Angel, who is a gay cross-dresser, that has AIDS and he meets Tom and they hang out a lot and go to AIDS support groups, and end up becoming more than just friends. All these people are all trying to scrape up money to pay this huge rent bill that they have and they are also trying to protest this building that is going to go up in their neighborhood. Pretty much they are just trying to make it in life and they are doing it apart from God. This movie was just so sad to me. The girl Mimi, is a stripper at 19 and she is doing all sorts of drugs and she is on them and off them again depending on whether or not she has a boyfriend. There is one scene where she is going through hard withdrawals and she is violently shaking and sweating all at the same time. There is a part where she is trying to fight herself from taking more drugs and she has the needle there right in her hand waiting and she is shaking. Then there is this sequence of the movie where they play a song and time passes and you get to see things happen, and there is part where they would show clips of the AIDS support groups and each time they showed a new clip one person would fade away, symbolizing that this horrible virus claimed another victim. I cried my eyes out for the whole last half hour to 45 minutes of the movie. Then it goes to this scene of the male gay couple, Angel and Tim, and they are on a subway train and Tim is holding tight to Angel who is shaking with a fever that he couldn't fight off because of how AIDS weakens your immune system. Then it shows Angel in the hospital sick with an oxygen mask and smiling with all his friends around him having a good time. Then it shows him in the arms of his lover and at this point he is dead, and Tim is rocking him back and forth in his arms in the hospital bed. I wept over this sight. I couldn't hold back the sobs. I was so shocked at how horrible life can be when left to fend for ourselves. The movie only got worse it seemed and I could not stop crying. I wept for quite a while after the film had ended. Then after I had stopped crying my roommates came home and said they had heard me crying about the movie and I started crying again.
What do I do about this? What part can I play? I will pray, but that isn't enough. I want to be right there with people like Tim and Angel, I want to rock that dead gay man. That is were Jesus would be. I want to rock him before he is dead and pray over him as he dies in my arms. I want to hold that hurting young girl who is shaking so violently and sweating so bad because her body is trying come down from a high. I want to befriend the gay men and women I want to love them and be there for them when life craps in their faces. I want to go to AIDS support groups to really offer support. I was so stirred by this movie last night. I was angry, it was this righteous anger at the people that the enemy gets a hold of. I don't want to see another gay person die alone from AIDS. I want to be there to hold their hand. And the thing was this gay man had more joy that all the rest of the people, where did he get it? He didn't know Jesus. I want to do something about this. What does God have for me in all of this? I want to be sent out into the AIDS community and into the gay community which in some cases go hand in hand. I want to educate myself about this virus so that I might be able to help some one, or even be able to know something about it for relatabilities sake. I would love to give my life to helping out people with AIDS. I am not going to sit around idle and not do anything about this. God created me to reach out to people. God created me with a story about him, not just to be kept to myself. God created me to love, he gave me a heart, that with his help has the capacity to love the unlovable. The things that happened to these people doesn't have to happen anymore. That girl on drugs doesn't have to do them anymore. She can come to know Jesus and be rocked in such an indescribable way." Jesus loves the outcasts, he loves the ones the world just loves to hate." That's a quote from a song by Relient K. I want to love the outcasts. What would it look like if a gay man or woman came to a church and got saved? What if we got to disciple them? Lord send us those people so that we can learn how to disciple them and forgive us for not letting them in or bringing them in when they cried out for help. I want those people in my life and Lord you show me how to love them in a way that best represents you and if you Lord are calling me to give my life to the Gay and AIDS community then lets do this thing!