The television show Quantum Leap is the story of a man, Sam Beckett, who travels through time, righting wrongs, and generally acting as a guardian angel of sorts who helps people who are most in need.
What made Quantum Leap a different kind of time travel story when it first premiered in 1989, were the constraints put on Sam’s journey. He could only travel back and forth within his own timeline (except for the time he went back to the Civil War) and he didn’t travel through time as himself. Each time he “leaped” into someone else’s life. So that every time he looked into a mirror, it was someone else’s face he saw.
The other rule is that Sam can only “leap” after he has fixed whatever problem he is facing in that time period. And he has to “leap” because otherwise he will never make it home.
That is Sam’s goal—to get home, back to his wife and family.
Sam eventually comes to believe that God Himself or some other higher power is leaping him around in time. And when he finally confronts God in the last episode of the series, he asks to be sent home.
But God, in the form of a bartender named Al, reveals something startling to Sam.
He and Sam have the following conversation:
Al: Why did you create Project Quantum Leap?
Sam: To travel in time.
Al: Why’d you want to travel in time?
Sam: To change the world.
Al: To make it a better place.
Sam: Of course.
Al: To put right what once went wrong?
Sam: Yes, but not one life at a time.
Al: At the risk of overinflating your ego, Sam, you’ve done much more. Much, much more. The lives you touched, touched others. And those lives, others. You’ve done a lot of good, Sam Beckett and you can do so much more.
Sam then reminds Al that his only goal is to get home. But Al then makes an interesting comparison.
Al: If the priesthood had been your chosen life, even though the Church might send you from parish to parish, don’t you have to accept responsibility for the life you lead?
In the end, Sam decides (keyword Sam) to continue leaping through time so that he can help others. He sacrifices a life with his family and friends. He leaves them so he can serve God. Though Sam has told himself repeatedly that the only thing he wants in all the world is to go home, he gives it all up, because he suddenly realizes that isn’t what he wants at all.
In this last episode of Quantum Leap, we see God giving Sam a choice. And that is how God works. God always gives us a choice even though He knows what that choice will be.
As much as Sam thought he wanted to go home, he also knew that despite the danger involved with leaping through time, that the ability to change lives as he had been doing was a gift, a profoundly beautiful gift that he could not let go of.
Matthew 13:44-45 says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
What do these two verses say? Finding the kingdom of heaven, finding God, finding a way to serve God, is like finding treasure, a treasure that we will sacrifice everything for. And we won’t make those kinds of sacrifices with bitterness, but with joy. With joy he “sells all that he has and buys the field.”
With joy.
That is how I know I’m on the right path. For many years, I thought I wanted one thing. Like Sam, I was confused. I thought I wanted what everyone wants, a house, a job, money in the bank.
But now I know that’s not what I want at all. Now I know I would give up all that in this journey to the priesthood. And surprisingly that doesn’t frighten me. It should frighten me and sometimes my brain gets too involved with the process and I am frightened, but then I remember the joy.
I feel the joy that lives in my heart, that sometimes takes my breath away and I know that there is nothing in this world I would want to do, nothing in this world that I could do, nothing in this world that would ever bring me that same joy that being a priest will.
Quantum Leap was my favorite show when I was a teenager and now I know why.
It was prepping me for a different sort of leap.
