The Backup That Saved Everything

In 1998, Pixar nearly lost Toy Story 2. Someone accidentally triggered a command on the studio's servers that began systematically deleting the film's files — character models, animation sequences, years of painstaking work — vanishing in minutes. Engineers watched helplessly as Woody, Buzz, and the entire digital world dissolved into nothing. Worse, when they turned to the backup system, they discovered it had quietly failed months earlier. The safety net had a hole in it no one had noticed.

Then came the miracle. Galyn Susman, a technical director who had been working from home on maternity leave, had a recent copy of the entire film on her personal computer. They drove to her house, wrapped the machine in blankets like a newborn, and brought it back to the studio. Frame by frame, the film was restored.

That is a picture of what the Almighty does with a human life.

Sin is the command we never meant to run — or maybe we did — that corrupts and deletes what we were made to be. And our own backup systems — willpower, good intentions, self-improvement — have quietly failed without us noticing. We cannot restore ourselves.

But God keeps a copy of who you were meant to become. Through the cross, Christ retrieves what was lost and restores it — not to some diminished version, but fully, beautifully, completely. "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). He does not just recover the old file. He makes it better than the original.