One of my favorite books is The Princess Bride. The movie is good, but not the same. The one-liners are classic. On the surface, it’s a standard fairy tale, and follows standard happily-ever-after format:
Scene 1: Boy Meets Girl
Scene 2: They Fall in Love
Scene 3: Conflict/Separation/Heartbreak (due to misunderstanding)
Scene 4: Reconciliation/Kiss/Fade
The Princess Bride also follows the standard bit where it’s always a mismatched couple, a couple that’s not supposed to end up together. They’re separated – Buttercup believes her beloved Westley is dead, and she’s tragically pledged to marry another.
But then she discovers Westley is not dead, and the following exchange occurs:
Westley: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn’t you wait for me?
Buttercup: Well… you were dead.
Westley: Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.
It’s an awesome line, isn’t it? I wish I’d come up with something slick like that. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it – a love that mocks even death. Paul wrote something similar to the church in Rome:
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:38-39)
If you haven’t noticed, the entire Biblical story is a romance, and in Hosea, we see the full drama condensed to one book. There are significant differences from a standard fairy tale, though. Hosea isn’t “safe,” because it’s about us.
In the beginning, we see a happy (and very mismatched) couple. But when tragedy separates this couple, it’s not because of a misunderstanding, but public infidelity, lies. Worse, we don’t get to identify with the innocent jilted lover. Instead, we’re the ones doing the cheating. And we have nowhere to hide what we’ve done.
But this is the story of the truest of true love, and it’s strong enough to overcome even this. What makes the the Biblical love story so truly amazing, though, is that in it the Hero returns anyway – knowing the full measure of His beloved’s infidelity, of our failure to reciprocate His stubborn, uninterrupted love – and He still pursues us with all His heart. And in the end, in classic romance movie form, Hosea and Gomer, God and His people are reconciled and live happily ever after. Revelation 19 is the biblical equivalent of the dramatic music swell at the end of the movie, the scene where – as the author of The Princess Bride puts it,
Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.
Ah, but we’re not to that part yet, are we? How great it would be if we could just live in the dramatic music swell at our conversion! In reality, though, reconciliation – even with God – is messy. The video Irving Bible did shows this so well.
When we come back to God, we all come back to God with unresolved baggage. The damage caused by our sin, by our infidelity – by our “whoredom” (as the Bible puts it) – is not undone in a moment. But God is faithful, and just as the modern parable of the video, He’ll take us and our baggage, so long as we’ll leave the sin behind and embrace Him back. He knows its going to be long process, and by now He’s proven He’ll be faithful to see the process through to the end.
Will we?
The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment, but the manufacture of a saint is the task of a lifetime.
– Alan Redpath
Since the beginning, God has offered us His hesed – his stubborn, uninterrupted, unfailing steadfast love. And that’s what He wants from us. Not sacrifice, not apologies. Not tithes, not service. Not good behavior. He wants our love. He wants the kind of love that is the only possible response to the incredible love He has for you and me. Do you know – really know how much God loves you? It’s the kind of love that changes us, that transforms us into the reflection of Him. It’s the kind of love that will make us into the kind of bride that belongs with Him at the end of the story.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father… that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:14-21)
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