Finding His Nemos

This weekend my family and I saw the movie, Finding Nemo, re-released in 3D. It may have been my first 3D movie as an adult, and I was grateful for those big glasses and the dark theater, for it masked the numerous times my eyes filled with tears. Aside from the fact that I’m apparently a sap at particular kid’s animated movies, the theme of the story was undeniably powerful.

Finding Nemo is the story of a little clown fish, the sole surviving child of Marlin, who is a widower and also a loving, doting father. In an act of defiance, and to assert his independence, little Nemo gets lost on his first day of school. This sends the otherwise timid and less-than-courageous Marlin on quite an adventure to search the ocean deep and wide for his lost son. Marlin encounters predators and faces death but does whatever is necessary to find his beloved child again and bring him back home to safety.

This made me think of another Father who stops at nothing to rescue a lost child.

This story is found in Matthew 18: 12-14. “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”

Marlin was never willing that his son should perish. Nemo was his child, loved beyond words, and belonged with his father.

We are God’s children, all of us, and we are made in His image. The Bible is His love story written for us. It is the story of how through one act of defiance, and in an effort to assert our independence, we chose to walk away from God, and ever since that moment, He has been on a relentless quest to reach us again; a passionate pursuit to bring us home. We are his lost child, and He is unwilling that any of us should perish.

That’s what the Bible is all about–a Father who stops at nothing to rescue a lost child. It is a beautiful, compelling look into the heart of our Father, a Father whose love is unconditional and never-ending. And it is this love story that we want the world to know and that we want our community to know, through the work of Urban Bible Outreach.