Great Expectations: The Hallmark Christmas Movie Edition

 

For many, what is intended to be a very positive, joyful, and spiritually fulfilling time of year ends up being everything BUT that.  Many times it can be wrapped up in our expectations.  Frequently, we get an idealized picture in our heads of how our holiday experience will turn out. Many times it's because our expectations aren't very realistic.

In December I cringe because I know that Hallmark has expanded the number of their channels and they run back-to-back Christmas movies, 24/7 for 25 days at minimum.  It's as if their mission is to force people, if they choose to watch television or streaming services, to watch Hallmark Christmas Movies.  Not once, not twice, but multiple times.

The issue I have is, and the reason I cringe is, IF you're going to watch Hallmark Christmas movies, you really only need to watch one of them and you're good for the season.  If you've seen one, almost literally, you've seen every single last one of them.  It's virtually the same story over and over again.  Predictable is nearly an understatement.  SPOILER ALERT: Turn the channel if you don't want me to mess up your next Hallmark Christmas movie experience.  

Here it goes:  Girl comes home for Christmas to her small hometown from the big city where she's been in a relationship with her jerk boyfriend.  The family's small business ifs failing, so she decides she'll extend her stay and help save the small business.  She's forced to work with a really nice and very handsome man who has that sparkle on his intensely white tooth when he smiles but for whatever reason she's annoyed by him.  Soon she has some a moment of personal weakness and prince charming is right there for her.  They begin to fall for one another but neither will say it. They take a walk and end up having a playful snowball fight in the town square surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights on perfect Christmas trees while a fresh blanket of snow begins to gently fall from the night sky.  You're welcome!

The problem is, our holidays really don't work themselves out that way.  Our mate doesn't wake up with perfect hair with their matching Christmas sweater as they playfully go downstairs to an already made breakfast spread to see their compliant and never complaining and always grateful children who are playfully teasing one another in THEIR matching Christmas sweaters, in a perfect huge clean house on a perfect street in a perfect town all of which looks decorated like Buddy the Elf threw up on it all.  It doesn't end up with you having a playful snowball fight culminating in a romantic kiss in a gentle snow.  Well, maybe a fight, but generally not playful.

I don't need to tell you how it usually goes. You've lived it.  Your family, extended family, layoffs, stupid drivers, crowded stores, rude customers, burned dinners, grumpy ungrateful kids, arguments, out of stock items, cancer diagnoses, sickness, unexpected deaths...need I say more?  Expectations have historically never been our best friends.

In my meditations on this, I was led back to the events surrounding the people of Israel who God had miraculously delivered from the hands of the evil Egyptian empire where Israel had been enslaved for 430 years.  The trip from Egypt to the land God promised to be given to His people has been estimated to take approximately a few months at most at that time.  It took 40 years!  Why 40 years??

Israel had left a very harsh environment of cruel slavery and hard labor, made even harder with the pride of Pharaoh who wouldn't have anything to do with the demands of God through Moses to let his people go.  They witnessed the miracles of God's judgment on Egypt through the plagues and through the miraculous rescue through the Red Sea.  

The joy of freedom had to have been intense. This generation and a few before them knew nothing of life without cruel oppression.  Now things will change for them. The presence of God would lead them and bring them through that journey.  Things will go much better.  Mind you, we're talking about traversing a harsh and unforgiving desert while basically moving a small modern day city across that territory.  God rescued us so it has to be bliss now.  With God, paradise, no difficulties, no more problems and pain.  Who knows what they had in their minds, but soon we're given clues. They start complaining about food, they complain about the kind of food, they complain about lack of water, they complain about leadership....get the picture?  There's a LOT of complaining going on.  And as you read the account, God wasn't happy at all with the complaining.  I don't think the anger was because they complained but because their complaints exposed their true hearts and their lack of trust that God would provide for them and bring them safely to the promised land. It seems as if they had certain expectations about what life would be like between the captivity in Egypt and the milk and honey flowing in the promised land and their experiences were far from that in reality.

What happens when our expectations aren't met?  We get frustrated.  We get angry.  We start giving up on relationships.  We fume.  We complain. We rant. We get depressed.  We experience anxiety.  We have no peace.  We give up.  And sometimes we give up on God.  

Jesus wasn't any better.  He didn't meet people's expectations.  The people were expecting a fighter, a soldier, someone who would bring back the rise of Israel to national dominance and defeat the oppressive Roman empire who had a grip on the world in that day.  Instead, they got a baby born in a no name town, who preached forgiveness and love instead of battle strategies, who broke all of the rules of a good religious person, and then they watched their hope be put to death as he was stretched out on a Roman execution device.  I think even John the Baptist had preconceived ideas of Messiah which didn't match what he experienced and led him to ask Jesus "Are you the one to come or should we be expecting another?  Apparently no one is immune to shattered illusions.  Disappointment, confusion, hopelessness, despair, and questions come when what happens doesn't match what we suppose will happen in our lives, even when it involves Jesus.

It's as if we expect life to be like Eden.  In Eden, the oasis of order and completeness that God created out of chaos and nothingness, an environment tailor made for the pinnacle of His creation whom he called Man (and woman).  Their Maker proclaimed to be not only good, but VERY good.  But the enemy of God tricked man into thinking that disobeying God would bring about better outcomes for him than trusting and following God.  As it typically is with deceit, the outcome was exactly as God had promised and was very unpleasant for Adam and his bride.  Banishment from paradise and perfection to the harsh wilderness outside of Eden which was no longer friendly, no longer in the day to day presence of the loving Creator who took care of their every need.  And they could not go back.  Now they would have to work harder and live in chaos and struggle, difficulty and pain.  And ultimately they die. 

But as mentioned before, throughout history from the beginning until now, God promised the possibility of an ultimate Eden remake (see the end of the story in the Revelation).  Until then, we're not in Eden, we're merely on the journey toward that Garden paradise. 

The problem seems to be that we somehow have the distant memory of Eden burned somewhere deep into our DNA.  No sin, no difficulties, no pain, no disappointment, no fractured relationships, no fighting, no sickness, no divorce, no problems at all.  And with that feint but very real longing I believe comes the forgetfulness that we were actually exiled. This life is no longer paradise, no longer ideal and perfect.  Even with the coming of Jesus, and the promises he gave, we at times have the expectation that all of a sudden Eden has been opened up to us again and that life should be different, better than we experience.  I think that with the coming of the Kingdom Jesus inaugurated, we can have some momentary experiences of Eden in part,  but we're still on the journey there.  We coexist in two worlds simultaneously. We expect more out of this life than we will ever experience.    

Does that mean we should expect the worst?  I don't think so.  I think what it means is perhaps we should make sure we are constantly viewing, reviewing, and examining our expectations and make sure they are grounded in reality.  We believe that God is good, that Jesus came to establish his Kingdom and some glimpses of Eden in our lives and through His church.  Our phantom memories of Eden are sometimes brought to life in part with some amazing and wonderful experiences the grace of God grants us in this life.  He is good. He is loving.  He is merciful.  And He is trustworthy.  

 Life is not a Hallmark Christmas Movie.  Does it have beauty?  Does it have love?  Can we experience peace?  Is there justice, mercy, and forgiveness?  Yes to all.  But the reality is, we're still on the journey through a world that has been vandalized and is imperfect and chaotic  as we move toward Eden.  My belief is that when we begin to accept the fact that our lives are always going to be less than ideal, we can accept the downturns so much better. It's still not easy.  Sometimes it's very difficult and tests the boundaries of our faith. When we understand that the Lord always seems to have an agenda that is much different and more perfect than our own, our expectations will be grounded more in the reality that He is God and we're not.  That His thoughts are not my thoughts and His ways are not my ways, but much better. (Isaiah 55:8-9)  The more grounded in reality we are, the less the sting of  disappointment.

 So maybe you won't have that Hallmark Christmas Movie December, but with the remembrance of the fulfillment of the promises of the coming of the Lion of Judah, the Messiah, the coming King, His grace will grant us some amazing moments in the next few weeks which give us a distant view of  life in Eden as we look forward to the fulfillment of the amazing promise of paradise restored.  FG