The Nativity Story: Romance 101

If you haven't seen The Nativity Story, you're missing out on a great chick flick featuring a wonderful hero. In contrast to the mooks, geeks, and sex-obsessed studs in other movies, director Catherine Hardwicke's character of Joseph serves, protects, provides for, encourages, and honors the object of his affection. And the movie's strong and courageous Mary comes to love, respect, and admire him, along with most of the girls in the theater watching, I'm sure.

As he portrayed Joseph in the movie, Guatemalan-born actor Oscar Isaac came to realize the importance of humility in both romantic love and in the love of God, as he revealed in an interview with Rebecca Murray:

...(The movie) is this big epic journey with this kind of little intimate love story. It's kind of the story of how these two people that are forced together — I guess one more than the other — how they ultimately become a family. I think that in itself is a fantastic story. Also, the fact that it's about humility and it's about love ... that God decides to come to earth to the most ostracized and oppressed of people — particularly two people who are ostracized by their own community in the little hick town of Bethlehem — in a cave, I think that's what the message is. It's not the powerful and the rich and the proud that are exalted, but the humble and those that act out of love that God exalts.

As I watched the love story of Joseph and Mary unfold, I was reminded that the feminine heart is still hungry to be cherished, and the masculine heart designed to offer sacrificial love, despite what the culture teaches about male-female relationships. And God continues to call young men and women to great things, serving side by side in an epic, dangerous, world-changing Story. This movie helps us to see that our instincts are right about what's great and good in relationships, and that the culture would have us settle for something much, much less.