He takes a job as a high school music teacher, figuring that after four years of teaching he’ll have saved enough to quit and do nothing but compose music. He absolutely hates teaching, but when his wife unexpectedly falls pregnant the savings earmarked for a life of composing have to be sacrificed to a mortgage.
Throughout the course of the movie we see a remarkable change in Mr. Holland. He arrives at a point when he loves teaching. He finds ways to inspire his students to love music, but not only that, to find their self confidence. This becomes his passion and his source of fulfillment. Thirty years pass, Mr. Holland is about to retire, and his dream of becoming a famous composer remains unfulfilled. On his final day as a teacher he packs up his desk, and heads for his car. On the way he hears music coming from the auditorium. Intrigued he goes to see what’s happening. He opens the door to find the auditorium filled with his students from the past 30 years.
They’re playing a piece of music he wrote. It’s a concert in his honor. One of Mr. Holland’s former students delivers the following speech.
“Mr. Holland had a profound influence in my own life, yet I
get the feeling that he considers the greater part of his own life misspent.
Rumor had it that he was always working on that symphony of his, and this was
going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn’t rich, and
he isn’t famous, at least not outside of our own little town. So it might be
easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong. Because I think
he has achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is
not a life in this room that you have not touched. And each one of us is a
better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the
melodies and the notes of your opus. And we are the music of your life.”Often we sail through life, unaware of the lives that we have touched, and many times changed. Usually those that we impact the most are our own family, children and grandchildren. However there will be many others. Sometimes, just a fleeting moment may be enough to change the course of someone’s life, or we may only be associated with them for a few months, yet it will be enough to change their destiny.
Some years I worked with a non-Christian woman, who told me when we parted that the few months that we had worked together had saved her life. When I asked how this was so, she told me that she had been preparing to commit suicide, but when I began to speak to her about things eternal, she re-evaluated her life, and over the time we worked together she realized that “some higher power” had propelled me into her world to get her to look at life in a new way. When we parted I knew that my “assignment” was over, and what I had been able to do with this life given into my care for a few months had been achieved.
Jesus said that as His disciples, we would pour forth rivers of living water, yet we often don’t even realize when this is happening!
Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water. John 4:10
He who believes on Me, as
the Scripture has said, "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water." John 7:38
The Greek word used for rivers is pot-am-os' and it
literally means a gushing forth of abundant supply of water. Remember…. These
words were written to people living in desert countries were an
Mr. Holland thought that his life’s dream had been unfilled, but the closing moments of the movie revealed a very different story. Are you writing an opus?
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