Disney's Enchanted is billed as a modern day fairy tale. We meet Giselle in her homeland of Andalasia, she's your typical Disney princess-to-be waiting for her Prince to come. The only problem is her prince has an evil step-mother called Queen Narissa, who has been distracting him with Troll capturing duties for the last few years. Finally they meet, Giselle falls, having been inches from the trolls grasp, into Prince Edwards lap. And he declares “We shall be married in the morning!”. Of course Queen Narissa has something up her sleeve to stop that, and pushes Giselle, in full wedding attire, down a well. When Giselle lands she finds herself in Times Square, New York. There she falls on Robert and his daughter Morgan. In this clip we see Robert and Giselle talking about their opposite realities.
CLIP 41:25-50:10
Now I know I'm exactly two months early for St Valentines day, but tonight I wanted to talk about Love. Disney knows a lot about love, the corporation seems to have a monopoly on the romanticised version of Love. Pretty much every Disney character you come across is in love, whether its with someone who loves them back, or something unrequited, or just in love with themselves. They all manage to find themselves in Love. Fortunately for us tonight, Enchanted, as modern day as it seems to be, still has a hint of the classic love story, from the days of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Boy meets girl, boy helps girl, boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after.
Love in this sense is lovely, it's nice, its possibly a little bit sacrificial, one of the themes in this movie tells us, True Love's Kiss will conquer all. Nothing can take away from the power of True Love's Kiss, not even a last minute ploy by evil. According to legend “True Love's Kiss” only needs to happen once and then we've found our true love, the one.
Before we go too far into all this lovey-dovey stuff, I feel I have to mention the fact that Enchanted has it's own cynical character. Robert doesn't believe in romantic love, he's not at all spontaneous and is quite seriously dismisses Giselle at the beginning of our clip when he thinks her approach has lost him a massive amount of money. Love, of course, isn't just for girlie girls and it's not for the faint at heart either. If you are cynical about Love, I pray that God will start to show you something of what He knows of Love.
How do we know that He loves Us? We're going to hear our Bible reading now.
Bible Passage: 1 John 4:7-12
To echo a brilliant song, how do I know He loves me? This passage says that “God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him”. That's the good news, that's the gospel. How do I know that God loves me? He sent his son, to die on a cross to save my life, but not just my life, my family's and my friends. Lillie talked last week about how we personalise our gospel, but we have to remember that God sent his only son so that “whoever believes in him will not die, but have eternal life”. Maybe the cross is your True Love's Kiss when it comes to God, maybe you have found your one.
That's great and all, but I think there's more. Look around at creation, God created a fairytale to begin with, and he asked who is going to appreciate my creation? So he created man, someone in his own image. Don't you think it's funny that we create something and then invite some one similar to us to enjoy our creation too! He had created perfection in the Garden of Eden, a fairytale land. We have to have got this idea of perfection from some where, what about the ultimate perfectionist God? Everything in the garden of Eden worked in balance, just like a fairytale. I was travelling home from the Youthwork Conference with Gill and we were talking about the sunset, something that still happens every single day. It was beautiful. I think we can see God's love through creation. The gospel is a show of God's love for us, it's one symbol. But we are constantly reminded of everything he's done for us in creating earth. We should be looking for God's love in the places which we least expect it. Is that your True Love's Kiss, this are just two examples, there are many more. How does your God show that he loves you? As the song says “He'll find his own way to tell you with the little things he'll do”. That's how you'll know, he's your love.
If you are cynical about Love, I pray that God will show you His love in the little ways. You have to allow God to show you his love.
Another line in the song is “don't treat her like a mind reader”. I think we can do this to God some times, though for our own benefit I think we need to tell God how much we love him and to show our love as well. We often come before God knowing that he knows our inmost being, but by speaking those feelings out we can start to have a conversation with God about how we are doing and how we are being.
So how do we show God that we love him? An author called Gary Chapman writes about the way in which humans show love to one another. These are known as our Love Languages. And there are five. There is Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, Quality Time and Physical Touch. The idea of Chapman's book is that you identify your own love language and the ones of those around you. We can experience love in each of the ways, but we all have a primary love language. At the Youthwork Conference retreat day we used the image of a tree to help us reflect. We, of course, began with the roots. As we were sitting at dinner one person said 'I don't really understand the roots thing, it wasn't explained very well' We had been asked what nourishes us. I rephrased it as, 'what are the things in your week which you cannot go with out?' This helped him a little bit, and then he got out his knitting. How do you answer this question? If you are having a bad week, what have you missed out on? This should give you a hint as to what your love language is.
These love languages translate when talking about our relationship with God. Jesus says in Matthew 25 “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” The doing in this passage is all acts of service. Feeding the hungry and looking after the sick. I think this would apply to all of the love languages, we show our love for God in the way we treat others. We speak our own love language a lot, but we don't speak other's naturally. To help others feel loved we need to show them love in the way they need to be loved. This is how we show our love for God.
So there are now only 11 days till Christmas. So how do we show our love to others because God love us. Do we take time writing our Christmas cards and letter with full of encouraging words to the recipient, rather than just telling them about our year. Do we send a little gift to every one on our street, or do we buy an ethical gift. Do we open up our home, or work over Christmas without grumbling. Do we just demand people time, time for them to get away, have a cup of tea. What can we do to best show our love over Christmas?
If you are cynical about love, maybe you haven't discovered how you give and receive love.
How do we know that God loves us? Creation, the Cross, the bible. God shows us his love in many ways. He'll show you in the little ways. And he loves us each in a unique way, tailored just for us.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
How do we share our love at Christmas? We do the things which God has asked us to do, we don't hide away, we share the story of the greatest love of all. And we let our light shine.
