Despite its rather unique premise—a couple struggling to have children literally grows their dream child from a box of traits and wishes buried in their backyard—The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a story that ultimately feels like many others we've heard before. While touching, its messages also border on clichè and are skimmed over so lightly that none of them quite have the kind of deep or lasting impact that they beg for. Basically, The Odd Life of Timothy Green is far from a perfect movie.

That said, imperfection is pretty much what The Odd Life of Timothy Green is about. Or at least everything that we so often see as imperfect, as a flaw, as a failure... but is really just a part of the bigger picture.

In more ways than one, The Odd Life of Timothy Green is like an illustration of the often recited verse from Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

Although Jim and Cindy Green (Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Garner) open the movie grieving over their failure to conceive a child, it is only through those circumstances that Timothy is brought into their lives.

Although Jim and Cindy may repeatedly find themselves making mistakes as parents, it is through those mistakes that they not only learn what it means to be a parent but what the truths and values they want to pass onto their children actually look like.

Although the impending closure of the factory where most of the town works may seem like an unstoppable force of impending doom, as Jim, Cindy, and Timothy reveal, it may also be just the launching pad necessary for a new beginning.

And although Timothy may be the best thing that ever happened to Jim, Cindy, and many others, as the movie shows us, just as trials have a way of preparing us for what is ahead, sometimes life's blessings take on their greatest meaning not in staying with us forever but in paving the way for even greater blessings beyond them.

Beyond the role of various parts of Jim and Cindy's life as part of a bigger picture, The Odd Life of Timothy Green is also a movie about the bigger picture that is mankind.

It is about failing bodies, imperfect parents, and boys who grow leaves from their legs.

It is about the differences that make us not outcasts and rejects, but unique parts of a body that gain our value from our differences not in spite of them.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? (1 Corinthians 12:17-19)

It is about the imperfections that may be a part of us, but are not all of us. The flaws that may cause us to stumble and fall, but which need not keep us down for the rest of our lives. The failures that may be a part of our life story, but need not be all of it.

It is about the beauty of a journey that doesn't just desire to leave us where we are, but aches to bring that which is dead back to life, fill that which is empty with love and joy, and pierce the darkest corners of our hearts and our lives with the warmth and light of a hope that is not just magic, but a reality..