I spent one of the most fulfilling weeks in all of my years of ministry last week with the Holston Conference Youth Assembly at Emory & Henry College. One of Keith Church’s former youth directors, Laura Lambert McLean is now the director of youth ministries for the conference. Back in January, she invited me to be the speaker for this year’s Assembly. It was a joy for me to put together some messages about God’s grace and to share some personal stories of how I have experienced that grace in my own life. I also especially enjoyed sharing this week with our older son Noah.
On my first night of worship with the groups – they were divided up into junior high and senior high age divisions – I shared with them some of my reflections on the new Toy Story 4 movie. Our family watched the movie together last weekend, and it just seemed to fit in with the theme of that first worship service on how we are all created in God’s image and beloved by God.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t worry. I’m not going to spoil it (even though I will say beware the ventriloquist dummies!) But the main character Woody and some of Andy’s other toys are now with the little girl Bonnie, to whom Andy had given his toys in the ugly-cry ending of Toy Story 3. Now Bonnie is ready to start kindergarten. She wants to take a toy to school with her, but her Dad says there are no toys at school. Woody gets into her backpack anyway, and Bonnie’s off to school.
Pretty soon it’s craft time. With some help from Woody, she makes this toy doll out of a plastic spork – a combination spoon and fork – that he’d retrieved from the trash. She gives it red pipe cleaner arms. Wooden Dixie cup spoons for feet. Mismatched googly eyes. Little rubber band for a mouth. And she calls him Forky.
I immediately liked Forky. I used to have this pink rubber bendy spoon from the Baskin Robbins ice cream place with gangly arms and legs that I called Spoony. I used it when I taught at a tennis camp in college to teach the kids the correct stances and swings. I think BR still sells them.
But Forky doesn’t realize he’s a toy. He thinks he’s just a piece of trash. There’s this hilarious montage of scenes where he jumps in the trash can, and Woody immediately rescues him. He jumps in the trash again. Woody rescues him again. On and on. Again and again. But eventually Forky comes to realize that he’s more than a piece of trash. He’s a toy. And he’s not just any toy. He’s Bonnie’s toy. Bonnie created him herself, in her own image if you will. And she loves him. She looks for him when he’s lost. She sleeps with him under her arm. Bonnie loves Forky.
Here’s the thing I wanted these youth to know that very first night of our time together. I wanted them to come to the same realization as Forky, that they are not trash, that they are handmade by a loving God, in the very image of that God. That whether they realize it yet or not, they all bear some aspect of God’s character in their own lives.
Maybe it’s God’s creativity that is reflected in their own creativity. Maybe it’s God’s loving spirit that they reflect. Maybe it’s God’s generosity. Maybe it’s God’s concern for justice for those who are oppressed. Whatever it may be, every one of us reflects some aspect of who God is in who we are. That’s true of us. That’s true of everyone else, too. We are not trash. No one else is trash either. Everyone bears the image of God in some way or another.
I asked them, “you know you’re not trash, right?” And they nodded their heads that they did. And I hope they do, and I pray they’ll always remember that. Because the truth is that sometimes people can treat us like they think we are trash, disposable, dispensable. Sometimes we can treat others like we think they are trash. And sometimes we can treat ourselves like we think we might be trash, too. So maybe we need to be reminded from time to time that we are not trash, that we are all of us, every one of us, God’s beloved treasures, infused with the image and imprint of God’s very being, in whom God’s soul takes such great joy and delight.
So then we dipped our fingers in a shell bowl of water, drew a dripping sign of the cross on our foreheads and remembered with gratitude and thanksgiving that we are all of us baptized and beloved children of God. And then we went to have our evening snack. That was one of the absolute best things about Assembly – evening snacks!
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