The Ever-Fixed Mark

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...

That's the beginning of Shakespeare's Sonnet #116. The first time I heard it was in the movie "Sense and Sensibility," which I have begun to watch for the umpteenth time. One of my favorite films ever.

I am loving the movie, as always, but this time with a bittersweet cringe. (Great name for a band?) I'm far too much like Marianne. But she learns...and I learn.

I love the romance of this sonnet, but ultimately, the ever-fixed mark in my life is Jesus...the Lover of my Soul. Oh how easily I "bend with the remover" which is usually my own flesh...my own faithless heart. I realize all-too late that an idol has a grip on me and I on it. And "it" can even be something good...something God-given. But Jesus wants to be First and He seems to be in the business of making this abundantly clear to me. So He pries my fingers off the things onto which I grasp and it hurts to let go. Like Marianne, I feel my feelings so deeply...right down to my toes...and before I know it, my emotional pores start oozing...sometimes beyond my control, it seems. Then I lose sight of my Ever-Fixed Mark; I can make Him out in the haze, but just barely.

What a patient Lover is He. He beckons. He waits. He beckons. He waits. And finally I come running, grateful for the Everlasting Arms that enfold me and the outstretched hands I can now grab since I am no longer clinging to something else. He forgives me, creates in me a clean heart and restores my joy. He lifts me out of the miry clay and places my feet on a rock and puts a new song in my heart.

And I learn once again that He is never shaken by the tempests of my soul.