Advent Love and Hallmark Movies

Let’s set the wonderfully familiar scene - a high brow executive is stranded in a New England small town that is obsessed with Christmas. This executive hates Christmas. She has spent her entire life focused on her career and NEEDS to get out of this town and back to the real world. But for some reason, all of the modern day conveniences of travel are just not available (car can’t be fixed, flight delays, spotty cell service…you know the drill). So she is stuck in this obnoxiously quaint inn that is run by a very handsome but equally obnoxious young man. This man holds every value that opposes hers and the two simply don’t get along.

Let’s skip ahead to the part where this executive is somehow roped into leading the charge of the annual Christmas dance where the two of them, for whatever reason, have to have the first dance.

And there it is. It’s like they’ve never seen each other before. They exchange smiles for the first time and just when they realize they’ve dance under the mistletoe, the executive gets a call saying she is finally able to leave!

But she’s upset. Maybe this life isn’t so bad. Maybe the innkeeper isn’t as obnoxious as she thought. Maybe her whole life had been prioritized wrong. And just before she cranks the car or boards the plane, she turns around, runs through a snowstorm and into the arms of the innkeeper who has loved her all along. They live happily ever after.

Also, one of them is royal. Somehow.

Substitute the occupations of the two main characters and you’ve got just about every Hallmark Christmas movie. We groan at the predictability of it, and ask for 10 new ones the following Christmas season.

I absolutely love them. At least once or twice a season, after my children are asleep, one of my girlfriends comes over and we drink hot chocolate, eat delicious Christmas cookies, and escape into this fantastical land of bookshops and small towns and Christmas cheer.

Of course. There’s a better Christmas love story.

It starts with a perfect God creating a perfect world. With a single word, he creates everything out nothing. Beauty abounds in this world he has created and he has deemed everything to be good. But the piece de resistance is man and woman - his children. He gives life to Adam and Eve and they are very good. There is perfect harmony and perfect relationship between them.

But this perfection doesn’t last. God’s enemy enters the garden and offers lies instead of truth. The lies shift Eve’s focus from her God to herself and sin enters the world. The relationship is broken.

But just when all hope seems to have been lost, this perfect God steps in. Yes, the consequences of the Fall would remain, but he offered a promise. A promise that one day a Savior would enter the world and overthrow God’s enemy once and for all (Genesis 3:14-15). Because even thought his children had rebelled against him, God’s love for them endured.

Over the next nearly FOUR THOUSAND years, God was faithful to his people while his people were faithless. He made good on his promises (Genesis 22:1-19), he delivered his children from slavery (Exodus 12-14) and he provided for them when all seemed lost (Exodus 16:4-5). And even though God remained holy and righteous and perfect and proved his love over and over again, his people wanted something more. Though God had provided judges, his people wanted kings, so God gave them kings (1 Samuel 8:5). But nothing apart from himself would satisfy their deepest longing.

The whispers of this Savior became shouts when God brought prophets to his people. His prophet Isaiah proclaimed the incredible news that this Messiah would “bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). His prophet Daniel proclaimed that this Savior would have an everlasting throne (Daniel 7:13-14). This Redeemer would bring an end to sin once and for all (Daniel 9:24)

And then the shouts became silent for four hundred years. Until the promise was fulfilled one glorious, holy night in the biggest plot twist the world has ever known.

God knew the demands the sin of his people held. He knew there was nothing a mere human could do to save his people from the just punishment of their sins. So God sent his only Son into the world (John 3:16). Jesus Christ, fully God, humbled himself and took on humanity (Philippians 2:5-11). Now fully God and fully man, he lived the life we could not so that he could be the ultimate sacrifice. He would be the perfect Savior. He would rescue his people.

God’s love had endured. It endured through countless acts of rebellion and faithlessness all the way to the cross where it was perfectly displayed in death. And his love continues now. Though, for a little while his people will continue to be grieved by the trials of this world, they can greatly rejoice because God has given them a living hope through Jesus’s death and resurrection and an imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance they will receive one day in heaven (1 Peter 1:3-6).

All because of his great love for them.

Now THAT is what I call a Christmas Love Story. Hallmark has nothing on the gospel. There is no ‘happily ever after’ that is in the same ballpark as the believer’s reward in heaven. There is not knight in shining armor that could be held up to the Savior that was sent to save us. There is no true love like the unending, never-failing, faithful, steadfast love of our God.

This is the love your heart and mine longs for. It is the only love strong enough to save us. It meets us at our worst and redeems our wayward souls. It sustains us in the trials. It cannot be shaken by anything this world throws at it. The love of our God is a love like no other. Let your hearts rejoice and worship your God.