A SOAP OPERA LIFE

Do you ever feel as if your life has become a soap opera drama?

I lived in the midst of soap opera drama this past week. Can you relate?

The TV soap operas tell melodramatic stories about the daily lives of interconnected characters tangled in unresolved emotionally complicated relationships. Each episode ends with a cliffhanger meant to keep the audience engaged with their favorite or disliked characters in risky situations.

Everyone in our family knew that you did not interrupt my grandmother As the World Turns.

Soap operas are not about soap or operas. The term supposedly came from radio dramas funded by soap companies’ ads.

Soap and operas have endings, but soap operas just tend to go endlessly on and on.

Years ago, I wrote a script titled, The Soap Opera to End All Soap Operas. This is the plot.

As the World Turns…All My Children… including The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and the Blue Bloods of our Modern Family gather in our Full House where we discover This is Us has One Life to Live.

The Real Housewives, the fake Kardashians, and Grandmother Madea’s Family Reunion along with cousins, Betty…Roseanne...Seinfeld…and Eddie, who is Not Smarter than a Fifth Grader, are All in the Family.

This is Us spends the Days of our Lives in a Family Feud at The Office of Parks and Recreation, on a Search for Tomorrow. They are listening for The Voice of that Masked Singer, while looking for the next American Idol.

Along the way to Nashville, Big Brother from Beverly Hills 90210 quits his job as Top Chef to play the Game of Thrones. He gets an Extreme Makeover as The Bachelor in The Real World…for 24 hours.

While Dancing with the Stars and their Friends at Melrose Place in Dallas, he stumbles along The Edge of Night without a Guiding Light. He falls with a Big Bang and gets Knots Landing on The Crown of his head. The accident broke The Weakest Link of his Grey’s Anatomy, which left him looking like Two-and-a-Half Men.

Hindsight would have been 20/20 According to Jim, but we had only 60 Minutes for CSI: Miami to rush to the scene with NCIS to meet Chicago Fire, P.D., and Med. 

Boston Legal took the case before Judge Judy at Night Court seeking Law and Order in Twenty-five Words or Less. The ruling was Deal or No Deal. One Jeopardy question remained: What Would You Do?  Call 9-1-1.

That sets off an Amazing Race to the ER at General Hospital where The Resident and The Good Doctor are no longer at New Amsterdam or in Private Practice. They have been fired by The Apprentice.

The Intern and Nurses diagnosed This is Us has been infected with a strange, rare disease called March Madness…a terminal Date Line…a Cold Case.

The Netflix binge series finale reveals the Wheel of Fortune prognosis of no Survivor.

Everyone is sent to The Twilight Zone, St. Elsewhere, or…Another World.

There will be no Trading Places…The End. 

Do you ever feel as if your life has become a soap opera drama?

Have you ever felt so lost in life that you think no one could love you again? You feel exhausted mentally and emotionally.

Sometimes we see others’ troubled lives and believe they cannot be helped or loved. Do you know someone who has crossed that thin line between hope and hopelessness?

Many people live dramatic lives like Erica Kane, but without her fancy clothes and makeup. No one can find satisfaction in their soap opera world apart from God. God made life that way.

The #1 Textbook describes life as crooked, broken, and missing something. We cannot fix it or figure it out.

Every soap opera life needs God for true happiness.

GOD’S LOVE HAS POWER TO TRANSFORM PEOPLE.

History records the stories of people whose lives were filled with melodrama of biblical proportions. Characters like Legion, the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, and the Old Testament Joseph were soap opera stars changed by God’s love.

Legion’s life was stranger than fiction. In the soap opera world, he was a mega star. He was well acquainted with the drama and conflict of a messed-up life.

The stories about Legion were a bigtime ratings-grabber. He was a mean, mad man, like a scary monster in the movies, only the tales were real.

Legion lost everything that mattered in life. He destroyed his family, shipwrecked his career, and blew up his friendships. His slippery slope story became a nightmare. He was a physical monster, an emotional wreck, and a social outcast.

The plot development was saturated with drama inside and outside. Frightened people practiced social distancing from his personal pandemic. He was Sleepless in Graveyards and Hopeless in Seattle or any other place on the planet.

Everyone saw Legion as beyond all hope.

Jesus brought His disciples to love this scary man who was no longer loved or loving. That encounter transformed Legion’s heart, soul, and mind.

Many lonely people go through life like Legion, dwelling in the graveyards of greed, gripes, and grumbling. They are among the Walking Dead who fight with family members, wrestle with addictions, and star in social struggles.

They feel desperately alone, alienated, afraid, and ashamed. They hurt and they hate. Self-destructive bitterness and self-inflicted misery know them well.

Legion was the poster child of a soap opera world without God, without help, and without hope. He was driven by the unrest that was in his soul, running in never-ending circles of nothing but misery. Socially alienated, spiritually unfit, culturally unacceptable.

It was humanly impossible to love him. He was the most hated soap opera victim/villain of all time. 

Jesus searched him out and that was the teaching point for the first disciples and anyone else following Jesus.

THERE IS NO ONE BEYOND THE HELP AND HOPE OF GOD’S LOVE.

Legion is an example of a hopeless cause that was revived through someone’s act of love.

Transformed by love, Legion returned home with the most important thing in life: loving God and others.

In another example, a woman of ill-repute showed up at the Samaritan well in Search of more than just Tomorrow. Her soap opera role lasted many years, featuring five husbands and her present scandalous relationship.

This soap opera diva’s shameful past and social status were prime news for tabloid gossip. She was the Whore of Sychar.

Her daily trips to the well showed she wanted more than just water or stability. She longed for true love and lasting happiness.

Jesus showed her love which transcended physical and emotional bonds. The living water of His love gave her life value, joy, and purpose.

When the changed lady discovered love for God and others, she positively influenced her city.

The third character in the soap opera highlights was the victim of the self-righteous hypocrites on social media who shamed and terrorized an adulterous woman.

Instead of being the scarlet letter star of this drama, she was about to be stoned. Not with a little marijuana, but with huge rocks.

This soap opera diva was trapped, humiliated, mocked, bullied, and judged guilty. The shaming mob surrounded her with threats of condemnation and punishment.

Jesus stepped inside the circle of the self-righteous crowd and openly declared to the woman at the center of their hatred, “I do not condemn you.”

Jesus welcomed the woman into a loving and forgiving community. Love changed her life.

“Lovingkindness leads to character change” (#1 Textbook).

How do we love first and most in a soap opera world? Jesus showed us the way.

TRANSFORMING LOVE ALWAYS STARTS THE RELATIONSHIP WITH NO CONDEMNATION.

Any Biblical list of favorite soap opera stars would rank Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat near the top. His story had a long run in several countries.

Perhaps, we can continue next time with the rerun of this highly dysfunctional family Soap Opera drama.

These Biblical soap opera stories convey an important lesson…THE GREAT VALUE OF LOVING ONE HOPELESS PERSON.

Each story’s spin-off showed how changed characters influenced their families and communities. What a way to end a soap opera!

Are you living in a soap opera? Are you the star? The villain? Or just a family member caught up in all the drama?

As the World Turns, do you feel as if you are the most messed-up hopeless person? Or do you live near General Hospital around someone who acts hopeless?

In any situation and relationship, a clear choice to change future goals comes from three available options:

1. You can give up and quit because things are hard or look hopeless.
2. You can keep things the same and ride out the season of life, just going through the motions while dying on the inside.
3. You can change the relationship for the better.

Give up. Stay the same. Change for the better. What will you do?

LIMITLESS LOVE IS ALWAYS AN OPTION.

End the soap opera. Be a difference maker. Stretch your side-by-side love wider, longer, higher, and deeper.

God lives inside of you to lead you to other hopeless persons He intends to love first and love most through you.

Live in your hopes, not your fears. No one is hopeless. Our failures do not define us. Our problems do not disqualify us. Our drama does not frighten away the restorative love of God.

WHEN YOU GIVE LOVE, YOU GIVE HOPE!

WE ARE ALL ROUGH DRAFTS OF THE FINISHED STORY.                       

THANKFULLY, GOD ALWAYS WRITES THE LAST CHAPTER.

EYES UP! LOVE YOU!