Jesus and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

Yesterday was one of those days of semi-lazing. Semi-lazing, you ask? It means I did do school with my kids; I did make meals; I did play the Wii with them; I did keep my pajamas on all day. I did not shower (did you really need to know this?); I did not do any other chores or tasks; I did not leave the house; I did watch my very own movie all the way through!

The movie I watched was Sense and Sensibility. I love it! I love the scenery. I love the clothing. I love the way the smallest look has the largest of meanings and everyone knows it. So in the movie, MaryAnn, is fond of reading Shakespeare's sonnets. The 116th in particular. At one point, she meets a man, Willoughby, who also loves them, carries around a pocket Shakespeare's Sonnets book, and has the 116th memorized.

The sonnet gets recited several times in the movie and by the final time of recitation, some of the meaning of the sonnet was really hitting me....the beauty of it had already captivated me...but the meaning was worming its way through to my soul.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The words: "it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark," This sonnet is not only about love in marriage and how that love is not dependent upon circumstances and events, but it hit me...this is what our love for Jesus is to be like! Love that looks on storms of life and isn't shaken...the light that every wandering heart looks for. That's the love that I want to show to Jesus and to Ben!