Some of you will say, ‘It is just a lousy movie – why are you getting so worked up about it?’ OK, so call me a sentimental old fool. But some of you will share my reactions. Something very deep down inside of me is touched when I watch a movie like this. It is tapping into some very real things in my life – even if I am not quite sure what.

On the one hand, because we are all different, we all react to things differently. Some things that really speak to us, or really hit us, or really move us might leave others cold. But on the other hand, because we are all made in the image of God, we all have universal experiences, longings, inklings and desires.

This might be a very odd article then, in light of my first point above. But because of the second, many of you might relate. My title speaks of love: a universal human longing. We ALL want to be loved and accepted and cared for. Yet in this fallen and broken world, most of us have known little of this.

Indeed, the place where you should find the most love and care – the family home – so often disappoints. A child might know little love but plenty of abuse and rejection. A child might see his or her parents break up at an early age, shattering their world. Parents might walk out on a child, never to return.

Then again, friends might also leave us or betray us. Spouses might turn on us and turn away from us. Everywhere we see love being smashed, crushed and destroyed. So many people are walking wounded, having never known what it is to really be loved and accepted and embraced.

Of course it is the love of God that must be turned to when all human loves disappoint and depart. Yet so many know nothing of the love of God. Or if they do, as believers, it can be in the form of head knowledge only, with no real sense or experience of its reality.

I know many Christians who feel this way. Many say they do not know what it means that God loves them. Yes, they have all the biblical and theological knowledge, yet it seems to be something they cannot seem to grasp, to appropriate, to experience, to enjoy.

Oddly enough, I too have known this. One can have a head full of knowledge about the love of God, and yet daily struggle to really know it and experience it. It is a funny thing. But I know that even though we are all image-bearers of God, and because we are all alienated from him due to sin, that even after a new birth the sense of knowing God is not always immediately there.

OK, so I am rambling here, but the reason for this piece being penned is this: For perhaps the second time in maybe the last 15 years or so I have watched good hunks of a film on television which for some reason really spoke to me. Indeed, I found myself choking up more than I ever have before. The tears could not stop.

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