Muppet Christmas Carol, Week 1: “When Love Is Gone”
Read Matthew 24:36-44:
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. 42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Consider these questions:
What word or phrase stands out to me as I read this passage? Why?
If I closed my eyes, and entered into the passage in my mind, what would I feel? What situation in my life today would relate?
What is an invitation for me from God and from this passage of the Bible?
Offer this opening prayer:
O Lord, open my heart so that I may receive your teaching and encouragement, open my lips so that I might declare your praise, and open my mind to the deep possibilities of faith that you place before us in the Season of Advent. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Important Words from This Week’s Song
When Love Is Gone:
There comes a moment in your life
Like a window and you see
Your future there before you
And how perfect life can be
But adventure calls with unknown voices
Pulling you away
Be careful or you may regret
The choice you make someday
Yes some dreams come true
Yes some dreams fall through
And yes the time has come for us to say goodbye
This Week from the Film:
The Ghost of Christmas Past guides Scrooge through scenes that remind him of who he used to be. The journey begins warmly enough, with glimpses of his childhood and adolescence, but it eventually lands in one of the most painful moments of his life. Scrooge watches his younger self talking with Belle, the woman he once loved. This is not a dramatic, explosive breakup. There is no heated argument, no betrayal, no scandal. Instead, Belle calmly describes how she has watched Ebenezer change by small degrees, choosing security and financial gain over tenderness and presence.
As adult Scrooge watches from the sidelines, he sees the bleak truth: this wasn’t a love that suddenly disappeared. It slipped away slowly. Belle senses that Ebenezer’s heart has moved on. She releases him, even though it breaks her own heart. The scene is achingly quiet. Scrooge stands there helplessly, unable to intervene, forced to witness the moment he traded genuine relationship for fear-driven ambition.
This is one of the few places in the film where Scrooge looks genuinely heartbroken. You can see it on his face: grief, regret, and the first flickers of awakening. The Ghost has exposed the cost of forgetting what matters.
“When Love Is Gone” is Belle’s lament, but it’s also a theological moment in the story. The song names a truth we often avoid: love rarely vanishes all at once. Instead, we lose it by distraction, by fear, by saying “not right now” too many times. The lyrics trace Belle’s realization that Ebenezer has allowed other pursuits to crowd out the relationship that once grounded him.
The song is a quiet confession. It isn’t angry. It’s sorrowful. The tone mirrors Advent’s call to self-examination. Belle mourns not only the end of their relationship but the loss of who Ebenezer was becoming with her. There is a deep spiritual theme here: we drift from love when our lives narrow around anxiety, self-protection, or the relentless pursuit of achievement. The number stands in contrast to the rest of the movie’s cheer. It forces the viewer to sit with loss.
And yet, underneath the sadness, there is a note of grace. Belle’s honesty becomes a gift. Her truthfulness is the first crack in Scrooge’s armor. Without this moment of revelation, the later transformation would not mean as much. The song teaches that naming loss is often the first step toward rediscovering love.
This Week from the Bible:
Matthew 24 sits inside Jesus’ larger teaching about the end of the age. The temptation with texts like this is to treat them like puzzles to crack, as if Jesus is secretly offering a timeline. But Jesus explicitly
closes that door. “No one knows the day or the hour.” Not the angels. Not even the Son. Only the Father. That statement shifts the conversation away from prediction and toward posture.
Jesus uses examples from ordinary life to make this point. In the days of Noah, people weren’t necessarily evil monsters. They were simply distracted. They ate, drank, married, planned, lived their lives. They weren’t spiritually alert. They didn’t notice what was happening around them. That’s the warning: not judgment imagery but inattentiveness or a kind of spiritual sleep.
The image of two people in a field or two women grinding grain emphasizes how subtle this inattentiveness can be. One person is awake and responsive to God’s movement while the other is not . . . even though both look the same from the outside. The difference is interior and rests in their awareness, readiness, and attention.
“Keep watch” is not a threat from Jesus. It is an invitation to be clear-sighted. Jesus is calling his followers to live with eyes open to what matters most. The Season of Advent picks up that same theme. Don’t drift. Don’t sleepwalk through your days. Don’t let your heart wake up one day and realize the love, the relationships, the purpose you meant to nurture has quietly slipped through your fingers. This is what happens to Scrooge as Belle sings. He didn’t lose her love all at once, but lost it slowly due to his own greed and inattentiveness.
Both the passage from Matthew and the song from the movie warn us that neglect usually begins unnoticed. Jesus is saying:
stay awake to the things that matter!
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Where have you seen slow drift in your own life?
Why is it easier to notice other people’s drift than our own?
In what ways does Advent call us to wake up emotionally or spiritually?
What does Scrooge begin to understand in this scene that he couldn’t understand before?
Closing advice from the wisdom of John Wesley:
Beware you do not lose the life and power of religion by small degrees. Wesley feared that Methodism would one day have the form of religion but with none of the power. We certainly don’t want New Hope’s mission in the community to have lots of style but to lack meaningful substance.