Romance. It's a simple word that seems to invigorate our hearts and awaken our imaginations of the many possibilities it possesses. The word seems to meet a desire in our hearts that we all contain- the desire to be a part of a story of romance. Think of the most beloved stories we know and pass on. The stories of the knight in shining armor who fights every monster and travels any distance that may separate him from his beloved princess. Something about stories like these connect with the very essence of human nature. This is the human part of us all that gives us the desire to be a part of a great romantic story. What most people don't know however is that we ARE part of a great story filled with every romantic element imaginable.

This story we are a part of is a story of a prince, a king even, who fell in love with a commoner that captivated his heart. Just like any good romance story, there are villains, broken hearts, and a big wedding at the end! This is the story of God's love for his bride, a love story we have heard of and maybe have read before, but this time i'm going to tell the story from the perspective of the main character, the prince. This is your story too, and it is his-story (get it?). And this is how the story goes from the beginning...

Ch. 1 (The Betrayal)

So in the beginning there is king, a god, who is perfect in every way, has everything and needs nothing, but there is a problem; he has no one to share it with. So he has an idea, to make a marvelous kingdom out of galaxies and planets, then fill it with heavenly beings called angels who could enjoy it with him. The plan works brilliantly, at first. The beautiful creatures made by the king are his friends, and they adore him with worship constantly. However, the kings closest friend and greatest angel, named Lucifer, became jealous of the king. One day Lucifer decided it was his rightful place to become king, and so during a great feast among the heavenly beings and the king, he rises up with his sword to betray his king and his friend, and to cut him down (literally) from his place of being king. Not only does Lucifer rise up against the king, but so does a third of the kings beloved angles. A battle rages but ultimately Lucifer fails and is exiled forever outside the courtrooms of the king. The king may have survived, but his heart was left broken.

Ch. 2 (The Princess)

The king is broken hearted, but is nevertheless determined to find someone for him to love. And so he creates us. From the very deepness of his loving heart he breathes into the earth and forms man in his very image, finally someone who is just like him that he can share his kingdom with! The king wants this love to be true on both sides though, so he allows Adam and Eve to eat a certain fruit in the Garden if they ever wish to leave him. Lucifer comes back into the plot now. He may not be able to get back at the king, but he sure could crush his heart even more by going after his lover. Why should someone else get all the attention that he deserves, he must have thought. Lucifer goes straight into the sacred place where the kings lover is, in the middle of the garden hand planted by the king himself. Here he catches Adam and Eve, the kings beloved, while the king is away. He deceives them into thinking that the only way they could be like God, the king, is to eat the forbidden fruit (Ironically they were already like God). Adam and Eve fall into this trap, and by the time the king finds them he is too late. His lovers, the ones made from the love in his heart, have betrayed him. The king knows the humans he loves must now be forever separated from him.

Ch. 3 (The Broken Heart)

The king is devastated, how could someone he loved so much turn their back on him? He does not give up though, the king is still wildly in love with mankind, and he knows that love always finds a way. And so he reaches out to love humanity, anyone who would only have faith in him. But God's lover decides not to turn back to him, instead they make love with the enemy. For thousands of years God watches his lover turn to false gods and commit all kinds of atrocities. He continually cries out for them to only return to his love but instead they would sacrifice each other in the name of their false gods. The king is cut to the heart- his people would rather serve a god that did not even exist, and follow the ways of his enemy Lucifer who did not even love them back. Imagine having to watch the person you love sleep with your greatest enemy, then to be taken advantage of till they have lost their beauty, and then they still refuse to turn to the one who has truly loved them from the beginning. Through all the years of emotional torture, the king remains in love with his beloved humanity, and determined to restore them to himself.

Ch. 4 (The Prince saves the Princess)

The king comes up with a plan to save his lover once and for all. If he can't bring his lovers back to him, then he will go to them. God leaves his throne and reincarnates himself as dirty, vulnerable flesh, in the form of a human named Jesus. Imagine a king leaving his throne and putting on rags to live on the streets, just to be with a homeless commoner he is in love with. The king knows the only way to break the curse of eating the forbidden fruit is to die, so he has decided to die in the place of his lover, in an ultimate demonstration of his love for her. The king is hated by the people he made on the earth, but his love for them continues. He knows they are still deceived by Lucifer. The king takes the torture and death that his beloved deserved by dying for humanity. With his little human strength he finds it difficult to carry his execution device, a cross, up a hill called "the skull". He becomes so weak he topples over. The executioners begin to kick him and taunt him, they thought it was over, that the king had failed. Through his broken hearted love though, the king fills himself with strength from his passion to save humanity, and he picks up his cross and makes it to the top of "the skull". Here he is executed, and humanity is free from the curse of separation from God.

Ch. 5 (The Wedding)

The king accepts death, and his soul continues down into hades, the place he created for Lucifer and his followers. "What the hell are you doing here?" said one of the faithful humans of old. "I'm here to save you," said the king. The next three days he continued throughout the underworld, setting free all who believed in him. He had rescued his faithful lovers of the past, but his heart was not satisfied. He would not be satisfied until he could be with the humans he loved on Earth and could bring them to his kingdom in the heavenly places. His heart started to burn with the passion he had for humanity since the beginning, and with the power held inside his heart he let out a deep roar, and then... a breath! He began to breathe, he was no longer in the underworld but back in the tomb his dead body had been placed in, he was alive! All of heaven began to cheer. The ruckus was so violent the tomb began to shake, and the stone which locked him in the grave was removed. The kings love for us had brought him out of the grave, not even death had the power to separate us from him. The king rose from the tomb, finally victorious in winning the heart of his beloved, and left to prepare of place for them in his kingdom.

We are left off in this part of the story, but what happens next? Well, if you flip to the back of the story, you find the end of the great romance story-

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come,and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelations 19)

This story ends with a great feast with the king and his bride- the humans who believed and accepted his love for them. From here a new story is created, the adventures and the life shared between God and humanity, who are forever redeemed to be with their lover. Until we reach that final chapter we are left to decide what part we want to play in this story, the sacred romance between God and humanity.

Sources:

Curtis, B. (1997) The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.