Learning from Toy Story

Church yesterday was really good. My friend spoke about how we tend to find our identities and value in various things—our occupation and career, a significant other, our strengths, etc. But what happens when we're laid off? Or a loved one dies? Or we lose abilities that we once had? I won't just regurgitate everything he said, but the parallel he used to finish his talk was extremely powerful.

He mentioned the scene in Toy Story (the first movie), when Buzz has that catastrophic moment when everything crumbled. Buzz thought he had been a powerful space ranger, saving the galaxy from a great evil. But it turns out he is just a toy. Despondent, numb, Buzz lost all desire to do anything. But Woody tells Buzz the profound truth, that he wasn't just a toy. He was Andy's toy. He was loved and wanted. He belonged to someone and was considered special. All he had to do was look at the name written on his foot, in permanent marker. He was Andy's.

That's a ridiculously powerful realization. I think almost all of us can understand and appreciate the idea and feeling of being loved. We give and receive that from each other in our best moments. We know that that's like, even if we've had a lot of experiences of the opposite. We just don't normally let it sink in... And life can whisper lies to us about our worth. But the reality is that we aren't "just a human". We're not nobody's. We're somebody's. We belong to God, in the best sense of the word. He loves us and has written His name on our foot, in permanent marker. For the moments we forget that, maybe we need to keep a copy of Toy Story in the DVD player. We need to be reminded, constantly, of whose we are. Everything in our culture seems to be pushing us to be independent and self-reliant and capable of doing life without needing to rely on anything or anyone, that our worth is in what we can do, or how well we can marry, or what accolades we can accomplish.

Those things can be stripped away. The Name that's been written on our feet can't be. Let's all remember who we belong to and receive that love from God. That's at the heart of what the gospel and Christianity is all about, I think. Loving God from our hearts, in light of His great love for us.