I’m a Star Wars junkie. So is my husband Ben. We have two cats, Luke and Leia, and a dog, Hoth. Our parents implored us not to follow suit in the naming trend when we had kids. We didn’t, but we did instill in them our love for the movie trilogy.

I recently watched The Empire Strikes Back with my middle son. It’s the second of the original trilogies and one of my favorites. It’s the first time we meet the wise old Master Jedi, Yoda. Young Luke   Skywalker finds Yoda in order to begin his own Jedi training and things don’t exactly go swimmingly. When Luke’s sunken starship bubbles beneath the watery surface he sighs in exasperation. Just a moment before he was using his mind to move rocks, but a starship? That was too big. Insert one of pop culture’s most famous dialogues:

Yoda: “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

Luke: “All right, I’ll give it a try.”

Yoda: “No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Not bad advice from a 2-and-a-half-foot green monster. It reminds me of what Paul wrote about our old and new selves in Christ Jesus…