“Why does she need to restore the heart to her?”

We were watching Disney’s “Moana” and she had heard this phrase several times throughout the movie. However, this wasn’t Echolalia, or the repeating of words or phrases that is sometimes seen with Autism. I could tell from her demeanor that this was a genuine question she was pondering. Until that moment I hadn’t even realized that my daughter had picked up on the movie’s story line. And here she was, not only aware of who was doing what, but also the language that they were using to describe it. This was an amazing moment for her.

I quickly answered before I lost her attention, “Moana needs to restore the heart to Te fiti so that she can cool down and not be full of anger and fire. She needs it to become who she is meant to be.”

Just as I was saying this another thought struck me and I added, “You know sweetie, we need Jesus in our hearts to be who we are meant to be. He helps us to cool down and not be angry, and to be loving and kind to others instead”.

I love how God can use anything, even an animated children’s movie, to reach hearts and minds. 

In the movie when the magical green stone, which is called “the heart of Te fiti”, is returned to the Island creature Te fiti, her molten fire dies down and is cooled into a rock-hard lava which quickly breaks away to reveal a beautiful green creature inside. We watch as the beautiful island creature emerges overflowing with new life in the form of colorful flowers and all kinds of greenery, and then begins to restore life to all the islands around, so that they too can be filled with beautiful living things. And in the end she returns to who she was always meant to be as the island creature who gave life to all the other islands.

As I thought about this movie’s story, it reminded me of another story from one of my favorite children’s books, C.S. Lewis’s “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. In this story, Eustace is the very selfish cousin of the four siblings who had previously ventured into Narnia. Magically he is pulled into the world of Narnia too, where he continues to show just how selfish and awful he can be. On the voyage he takes a dragon’s treasure and plans to keep it for himself, but in the middle of his stealing he accidentally falls asleep instead and awakens a dragon. Aslan, the great lion savior of the Narnia series, appears and takes the boy aside to help him. Eustace had tried to fix the problem himself by scratching at the dragon skin and taking a few of the layers off, but no matter how hard he tried he could only pick away at the problem and never solve it completely. He remained a nasty dragon. Only when he finally surrenders to Aslan’s offer of help and restoration does the boy become truly free of the troublesome dragon skin, and the boy becomes who he was meant to be, a boy once again.

Two simple fictional children’s stories, but I just couldn’t help but see the parallels that God was drawing for me from these stories to our own reality. This is totally my life and how God often interacts with me. This is where the living and the thinking happens. It happens while watching a kid‘s movie that I’ve seen a million times or more, while doing the dishes and the laundry, and while reading children’s books sitting in the waiting rooms of doctors’ offices. It happens in the midst of both the chaos and the mundane. Yep God can use anything to reach hearts and minds, and He often does in my life.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.“ 

2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB

This amazing verse jumped into my mind as I thought about these stories. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ”. What does this mean? God has promised that when we ask Him to come into our lives and into our “hearts” as our Savior and Lord, He will. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”(Romans 10:13). This is what it means to be “in Christ”. It simply means that when you accept God’s gift of salvation you are now a Christian.

The second part of this verse goes on to say that you are “a new creature (some translations say creation); the old things have passed away; behold, new thing have come”. Isn’t this incredible?! God has made this beautiful promise to us, that when we receive His gift of salvation we are then made new. We are free of our past mistakes and we are no longer the same.

Just as a butterfly bursts forth from its surrounding cocoon no longer an ugly caterpillar, and the island creature Te fiti breaks free from the angry lava that constrains her, and the boy Eustace looses and leaves behind his selfish dragon skin, to become who they are all meant to be; we too leave behind our old nature and come forth as a new beautiful creation clothed in God’s righteousness. And we become who we were always meant to be.