The Greatest Love Story of All Time
- Tom Faletti
- Dec 1
- 5 min read
Most people love a good love story – in movies and plays, in literature and books. But many people don’t realize that the greatest love story in the history of the world is celebrated every year – and YOU are in the story!
This month we celebrate the greatest love story of all time. It involves two parties that couldn’t be more different. More different in class and status than Rose and Jack. More different in temperament than Beauty and the Beast. More different in background than Ariel and Prince Eric. More different genetically than Bella and Edward.
In this story, one party is of an entirely different nature (not just a different species) than the other. One party transcends all boundaries to reach his loved one, who is bound by time and place. One party knows all the ways that the other party will ignore, betray, and reject him, and yet he continues to pursue his love interest year after year.
The story is about God and his love for humanity, and Christmas is central to the story.
The story began before humans knew what time was
This love story began when God created a world that had the physical, chemical, and biological properties needed for human life. By his own creation and the biological processes of evolution that he spawned, he made an endless variety of life.
But God was not satisfied simply to make life out of nothing. He wanted more. He wanted to make special creatures who would bear his image – people who could receive his love, respond to his love, and embody his loving image in the world.
He knew that these human beings would turn away from him, so he planned from the beginning to come to Earth and become one of us: to become a physical being like us, without giving up his divinity, so that he could show us the way to receive and live in his love.
Christmas is a key moment in the greatest love story of all time
To achieve his goal and break the barriers between us and him, God chose to be born into our world as a human being. The immaterial became material and took on our nature. The divine became human. God became a human.
We call that day “Christmas.”
But what kind of “us” did he come for?
One might think that the God who created the Universe would choose to be born in a palace, to the most powerful queen on Earth.
Instead, he chose to be born in a place where animals were kept, to parents who did not have the means to avoid such a plight.
Why did he choose to be born in obscurity and poverty? Because he wanted us to know that he loves all of us, not just those at the top.
Christmas tells us that God loves everyone
His human mother saw the meaning in his choices.
Mary knew her own poverty and her insignificance in the eyes of the world she inhabited. In her song known as the Magnificat, she notes that God has “looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant” (Luke 1:48, NRSV).
Why would God choose for his mother a poor teenager from an obscure village in a land under occupation by a brutal dictatorship?
Mary tells us why.
God has a special place in his heart for the people that other humans care little about. Therefore, he has “scattered the proud . . . , brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (1:51-52).
He stands beside those who have no one on their side. Therefore, he has “filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (1:53).
This is not a love story that will end in tragedy like the tale of Romeo and Juliet or Erich Segal’s Oliver and Jennifer. Yet neither is it a love story where the suitor is enticed by riches or mesmerized by beauty.
God does not woo the wealthy. The poor are his passion, and his hunger is to give his love to the hungry, to lift up those whom the rich reject.
God sees loveliness in those whom the world calls ugly. He treasures those the world calls worthless.
He loves everyone, not just those at the top, and his love extends to all who are willing to accept his love and extend it to others.
Christmas tells you that God loves you
It would be a tragedy if you thought the Christmas story was merely a story about the past. It’s not.
It’s a love story that endures today. And in this love story, God loves YOU!
In the Christmas story, the Lord has come, and YOU are the recipient of his affection.
In fact, God loves you so much that he can’t take his eyes off of you. The psalmist says:
Lord, you have probed me, you know me:
you know when I sit and stand;
. . .
Behind and before you encircle me
and rest your hand upon me.
. . .
Where can I go from your spirit?
From your presence, where can I flee?
If I ascend to the heavens, you are there;
if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.
If I take the wings of dawn
and dwell beyond the sea,
Even there your hand guides me,
your right hand holds me fast. (Psalm 139:1-2, 5, 7-10, NABRE)
And Jesus says:
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. (Matt. 10:29-31, NABRE)
You are living in the greatest love story of all time. The love story of Christmas is the ongoing story of God’s intense, unlimited, everlasting love for YOU!
He came for you because he wants to have you always in his presence.
Let him meet you where you are right now and show you the way to receive the fullness of his love.
To explore further how the Christmas story applies to you, see Session 1 in my study of the life of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
