Love's Labour's Lost (Not)

Berowne:

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:
As, painfully to pore upon a book
To seek the light of truth; while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

--"Love's Labour's Lost, Act 1, scene 1, 72-79" ~William Shakespeare

In this early Shakespearean comedy, the Spanish King of Navarre decreed he and his three friends were to swear an oath and devote three years to a life of "academe." (Would the Bible be studied in this sabbatical?) The scholary regimen included contemplation, fasting often, sleeping three hours a night, and speaking to no woman.

One of the three courtiers, Berowne, trippingly on his tongue, pleaded against such a harsh academic trial, he alliterated: "Light seeking light doth light of light beguile."

When one staring too long at the books, Lord Berowne contested, it would be painful; why should anyone give up life's pleasures to pursue pain? Reading is blinding, he pressed the point further. Light (the eyes), by seeking light (in seeking truth), doth light of light beguile (it ruins the vision). Then Berowne prattled on in this deliciously self conscious sophistry. Rather than thinking one is going to find truth in the dark recess of books, he reasoned, one is plunged in despair because blindness will shut the latter from the truth.

When the Princess and her retinue arrived, all pretense or modicum for academia dissipated. Lofty ideals for learning gave way to wooing. After some merriments of mixed-up love letters and masquerades, the ladies chided the men for their abundant gestures of infatuation but deficient in true love and commitment. Before the ladies were to give their hands, all four men must wait a year for their affection and fidelity to be tested. Thereby it hangs the tale of a love's labor's lost (temporarily).

God's labor of love is not inconstant. In the 1189-chapter letter to His children, God meticulously lay out His abiding love for them. Metaphorically, the catholic church is His bride (Song of Soloman 5:9; Ephesians 5:23; Revelation 19:6-8). His love is not a fickle affection amounts to no more than infatuation. It is unmeasurable and everlasting. In the second person of the Trinity, Christ's love expands from the beginning before time (Proverbs 8:22-23.) It spans from the east of the sun to the west of the moon, reaching to the farthest of heavens (Psalm 103:10-12). Moreover, His holy light never dims to hurt or blind, but to heal ( Revelation 21:23). Notwithstanding Berowne's witticism, it is in God's light do we see and feel the light of truth evermore (Psalm 36:9; Isaiah 60:18-20).

Neither is God's love labored in vain. For we are a fragrance of Christ saved from wrath through His lovingkindness (II Corinthians 2:15). On this Labor Day, I read once again how Christ Jesus labored and supplicated for His own (I John 4:10; John 17).

By the grace of God within us, let us labor to prove His love for us is not in vain (I Corithinans 8:6; I Corithians 15:10).