Posted July 28, 2025

Do you remember the CBS Children’s Film Festival, hosted by Kukla, Fran and Ollie? Saturday mornings, right after Bugs Bunny? One film I remember in particular was from Japan and called Skinny and Fatty. It was the story of two grade school boys, Skinny, whose real name was Komatsu, and Fatty, whose real name was Oyama, and how Skinny befriended Fatty.

Befriending Fatty was no insignificant act. Fatty was called Fatty for a reason and ridiculed accordingly (kids are kids, even in Japan). Fatty needed a friend, and Komatsu took him under his wing. They played together, ate lunch together, walked to and from school together, and had sleepovers. Komatsu didn’t see Fatty, he saw Oyama—a kid who was far more than his considerable chunkiness. Komatsu encouraged Fatty to ignore the other kids. Don’t be ashamed, he told him, have faith and believe in yourself.

Central to the film’s story was a physical education test. Every kid had to pass it before the end of the year in order to move on to the next grade. Fatty managed to huff and puff his way through every part of the test but one: climbing to the top of a pole. Every week, Fatty tried, and as the kids laughingly gathered around to watch him lift himself six inches off the ground only to fall back into the dirt, Fatty failed. And every week, Komatsu helped Fatty up, dusted him off, put his arm around him, and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll do it next time.”

Then, for Fatty, the earth stops turning. Komatsu tells him he’s moving to another town. Fatty begs Komatsu not to go. How can he do alone what he has to do? Komatsu tells Fatty one last time: have faith.

Skinny and Fattynever talks about a deity, let alone the God of Israel. Indeed, there is nothing in the film about any power other than faith in yourself and the refusal to quit. Yet the film seems to resonate with one of the most important truths of the Christian life: the God who made you is the God who never leaves you. It is the promise that in often small yet miraculous ways, heaven remains forever connected to earth. God can break into our lives no matter how bleak they seem with the power to give us a completely new future because nothing is beyond God’s transformational power. Even if the breaking-in is simply words of encouragement from one child to another.

Consider the story of Jacob—deceitful, despicable, cowardly Jacob—who’s stolen his older brother’s birthright and taken off running in fear for his life. His grandfather Abraham walked with God, trying to do precisely what God wanted, yet Jacob runs from God, guilty of doing precisely what God did not want, and runs until he can run no more (Genesis 28:10). It’s worth asking what kind of future at that moment did Jacob have? Or Fatty, sitting in the dirt, having failed yet again to climb the pole and Komatsu gone—what kind of future did he have?

Granted, there was far more at stake with Jacob than Fatty. With Jacob, the future of an entire people was in the balance; with Fatty, it was whether or not he’d matriculate from one grade to another. But what was happening for both was about more than their respective futures. It was about their identities. Both had a past and a present marked by failure and wounds that had come to define them. In each of their respective moments—Jacob laying on a stone, Fatty sitting in the dirt—could they somehow be asked, do you see a way forward?, my guess is both would answer no.

Yet even in the face of no the promise remained. “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go,” God tells Jacob. “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:15). A God with the power to break-in, wherever we are, whatever we face, is not a God deterred by no.

Toward the end of Skinny and Fatty, Fatty has one last chance. Fatty stands in front of the pole, the kids gathered around him, already laughing, certain they will see Fatty fail this last time as he has all the others. Fatty grabs the pole, and when he does, he hears the voice of Komatsu: Have faith, believe, and you can. He puts one hand over the other, then again, and again. Six inches at a time he climbs until he reaches the top of the pole. He lets go and slides down into the arms of the other kids, waiting to catch him, no longer laughing at him but with him.

In the final scene, Fatty hikes to a hilltop outside town and looks in the direction Komatsu moved. He cups his hands to his mouth and yells as loud as he can: Komatsu, thank you!

Scripture tells us the story of Jacob. It is an important story of the future of God’s people. And yet, important as it is, it seems to me that the story of Skinny and Fatty may be more important still. There are very few Jacobs in the world, but millions upon millions of people just like Fatty who desperately need to know that however hopeless life seems in the moment, nothing is beyond the transformational power of God. People who need to know the promise, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.