The Heart of the Matter

Undoubtedly the Toy Story Trilogy rocks! What's not to love? A Space Ranger (now with Spanish mode) a Cowboy, fantastic story lines, humour, friendship, little green men, Barbie & Ken, plus heartfelt emotion. (Even the husband and his brother found the incinerator scene quite hard to watch!) We waited with anticipation for Toy Story 3 in our house. And it didn't fail to win our affection. I watched it on Christmas day, and bawled because I thought my boys were about to leave me to go to college! Then I realised I had about eleven years until that may start happening.

Now with all good kid's films, there is always a baddie. Boo...Hiss... Sid the boy next door, Stinky Pete the Prospector, and Emperor Zurg. But Toy Story 3 presents us with Lotso. Lotso is a soft cuddly bear who smells of strawberries, and comes across as very kind, gentle and caring. But no no no. Lotso is a mean, selfish bear. He was rejected and became a bitter and hard hearted 'not so cuddly bear'. There is a moment in the film, where Lotso has a chance to redeem himself. Woody helps the undeserving bear because he is in danger. But when he has a chance to help the others, he opts out and chooses to think only of himself. Boo...hiss...indeed!


I thought I'd use Lotso Bear's antics as an opportunity to teach the boys. So I asked them what they thought was wrong with Lotso. My eldest responded that he was nice on the outside, but inside his heart was selfish. We looked at Proverbs 27v19 "As in water reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man." The boys needed the verse explaining to them, so I spoke to them about how if we look in water, we can see what our face looks like. And so it is with our heart. If we look at what we say and do, it shows us what our heart is like. We looked at Lotso's heart, and talked about his actions and his words. Mark Driscoll puts it quite clearly "Your heart is the reflecting of your identity, of your essence, of your nature. It is a reflection of who you are." And Lotso's identity, essence and nature shows us that his heart is cold, mean and selfish. He had allowed his rejection to turn into bitterness and selfishness.


We also looked at Psalm 51v10
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." And we asked God to do that for us. We asked Him to make our hearts good and clean, and that people would be able to know what our hearts looked like, by looking at our words and actions. My hope for when we train and discipline our boys, is that their hearts are changed which is reflected in their behviour and not the other way round.