Family Movie Devotionals: Moana

Moana lives on a peaceful, beautiful island. Everybody has what they need. But all of a sudden, their plants stop producing fruit that’s good to eat. There are no more fish to catch. Darkness is spreading all over her island. We learn that this is because Maui, a hero with magical powers, stole the Heart of Tafiti. This is what gives life to the land, and when he stole it from Tafiti, things began to die. It’s now Moana’s job to bring the heart back and restore the land before it’s too late.

Do you know what the word restore means? It means to make something right again. For example, if you have a really cool toy and you break it, you can restore it by fixing it. If you hurt a friend’s feelings and they are mad at you, you can restore your friendship by apologizing. Moana needed to restore the world, because darkness and death was spreading. When she gave the heart back to Tafiti, the land turned from dark to green. Things started to grow again, Fish began swimming in the ocean. She restored the world.

The idea of restoring the world is super important in the Bible. Have you heard the story of Adam and Eve? They were the first people that God made. They lived in a beautiful garden where there were many fruit trees. They had lots of food to eat. But God gave them one rule, they could eat any fruit they wanted from the garden except for one. This was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God said if they ate from it they would die.

But one day, the devil came to the garden as a snake and lied to Eve. He said that they would not die, but that they would be like God if they ate the fruit. Adam and Eve both ate the fruit they weren’t supposed to, and sin, darkness, and death entered our world for the first time. They were thrown out of the beautiful garden and forced to work hard to grow food.

This is why there is sin, sadness, and death in our world. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and darkness spread to the whole world. It’s like in Moana when Maui takes the Heart of Tafiti and the whole world suffers. But there is good news! Just like Moana restored the heart, we have a hero that has come to restore our world from darkness. That hero is Jesus!

When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, he undid what Adam and Eve did when they ate the fruit. He saved us by stopping death and darkness. And someday, he is going to come back to Earth and restore everything. Like in the end of Moana when Tafiti turns the whole world green, Jesus is going to come and turn our whole world right. And it’s going to be even better than anything we’ve seen in any movie.

Jesus is going to bring Heaven and Earth together, and everything will be peaceful, beautiful, and perfect. There will be no more sickness, no more hurting, no more crying, no more sadness, no more sin, no more chaos, and no more death. Jesus is coming back to restore the world, and we get to be a part of it!