My two oldest sons, Jeff and Chris, have been planning to shoot a short, independent film for the past year or more. They had the script written before they started film school last August (2005) and have been working toward the goal of filming it ever since. Months of preparation have gone into this. Many people have given up hours and hours of their time, and are taking off work to be in on the filming.

It’s amazing to me all that goes into such a project. There is the crew – people who run the lights, the sound, makeup, the DP (director of photography) who runs the camera, the producer, who has done a TON of work on this to pull it together, the directors (my sons) who make the decisions, spend the money, and plan out exactly how to shoot each scene. Then there are the grips, who do the grunt work during the shoot, the food service people, who prepare the meals to feed the cast and crew (that’s me and a few helpers), and the cast – the actors who get to star in the show.

On a big feature film, everybody gets paid to do all of this and it can take months, even years to complete. For this project everyone is a volunteer and the whole thing will be shot in one week.

When my guys were younger, they loved to make home movies using our video camera. As they got older, they borrowed a friend’s digital camera (we didn’t have one back then) and made the What the Muffins? episodes. Now they look back on all of that and see how much they still had to learn. And after attending film school, they are taking the next step to produce this short film for graduation. I just never realized until this week how BIG this project is!

When all is said and done and the film is put together, they hope to enter it into film festivals, which is yet another step toward their ultimate dream of making feature films. But even if nothing else comes of this project, it has taught us all one important lesson. To pray about everything.

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, he told them to ask for “daily” bread. And when the Israelites walked 40 years in the wilderness, God only gave them manna one day at a time, except for the Sabbath so they could rest. This project has been so big, with so many things out of their control, that we have had to trust God with the details – one day at a time. God only gives us grace for the trials on the day that we need it. His mercies are new every morning.

This next week we will all need His grace to get through the filming without any more glitches. (There have been plenty so far.) If any of you feel led to pray on our behalf, we welcome your prayers.

And hopefully, in a few months or more from now, I’ll be able to announce film festivals where the film might be showing. But until then – we’re counting down ’til the shoot begins on Monday.