Scripture: Luke 9:2-36; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
People frequently ask me – because I used to work for Disney animation – what my favorite Disney movie was. My answer is always simple – my two favorite movies are Mulan and Beauty and the Beast.
And the reason I love these movies is because they’re movies about transformation. Beauty and the Beast in particular, if you remember right, started off with the handsome prince being turned into a horrible looking beast – the point – to make his outside reflect what was on the inside. A beast. An angry, ugly, snarling beast that cared nothing about anyone but himself. And the only thing that was going to change him back was to act in love towards another. His was a self-serving love at first—he wanted someone to love him so that he could change back—but that wasn’t how it worked. The beast soon discovered that unless he acted out of genuine self-lessness—that when he genuinely loved someone other than himself, it perhaps meant not having things the way he wanted them.
