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| Juliet's death scene (source: randjbalcony.blogspot.com) |
As a homeschooling mama of three, I find that I often have to read ahead of the kids on all kinds of various subjects. This week, I've been brushing up on ancient Greece, rocks and minerals, and Shakespeare.
My favorite way to do this is to use children's books--either picture books or thin paperbacks in the children's section of the library.
Take Shakespeare: there's no way I can familiarize myself with his entire canon (which consists of 36 plays I think!), so I just hit the high points and try to get a grasp of main characters and general themes of his major works.
One afternoon, I was able to take in Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Romeo and Juliet using the Shakespeare stories from this collection.
Immediately, a major theme appeared between all three of these works: love and death.
We see this when Juliet utters her famous line, "Oh happy dagger!" and stabs herself when she sees that Romeo had drank poison and died (presuming she had died). Othello also stabbed himself, lying beside his dead wife (although in a fit of jealousy, he had killed her, then found out she was actually innocent--whoops!). And we see Cleopatra, having sent false word to her lover that she had committed suicide, allows a deadly snake to bite her upon hearing that Antony had killed himself because of her tragic news (as we can see, there are always lots of misunderstandings, and suicides, in Shakespeare's world!).
And these classic stories got me to thinking...
To us readers, there is something that seems "right" about seeing these star-crossed, ill-fated lovers being so attached and heart-bound to one another that one is willing to die in order to spend eternity with the other.
Somehow, on some level, we understand that true love must mean certain death.
Why, I wondered?
And then it became crystal clear for me: because we see this example with Christ.
Jesus loved us enough to die on the cross to make atonement for our sins.
Jesus loved us enough to die so that we would be able to spend eternity in perfect fellowship with the triune God.
And as we love and serve one another here on earth, this, too, requires certain death. It requires a death of self--a renunciation of living for our own desires and concerns and a supernatural giving of ourselves to serve that other person.
I love how every great story simply echoes the greatest story...the gospel story.
May our world, may our lives, may our relationships be forever rocked by this amazing (and true!!) story of love and death, and may it be a balm to our weary souls today, dear friend!
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." --1 John 4:10
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