Ground Hog Day

One of my all-time favorite movies is “Ground Hog Day”. I bet I’ve watched it a 100 times. The movie centers on a local weatherman who travels to a city he despises to cover an event he despises… a groundhog who predicts the future weather. Weatherman Phil Collins (played by Bill Murray) is arrogant, condescending, and prideful.

While covering the event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania he wakes up to find he is living the same day over and over again… in the same miserable city covering the same miserable event. At first he takes advantage of the situation and seduces women, steals money, flaunts the law and gets thrown in jail but every morning he wakes up bearing no consequences for his actions… but there is one woman who despite all his efforts he cannot seduce… Rita, his program manager.

Eventually he despairs of taking advantage of people and tries all kinds of methods to kill himself, but he wakes up every morning still alive.

Then one day gives up the futility of trying to seduce Rita and decides to start living to serve other people. He fixes flats for old people, he saves a kid who falls out of a tree everyday, etc. Women (not Rita) start trying to seduce him. Along the way he learns a foreign language and how to play the piano and becomes the type of caring, giving person that Rita falls in love with. At the complete transformation from being arrogant, condescending and self-serving to being compassionate, caring and humble Phil finally wakes up in a new day… and wins Rita.

That, my friends, is a microcosm of the futility of life and the acceptance of Jesus Christ so that like Phil we can be transformed and find true happiness. The problem with Phil was… Phil.