Such a wonderfully put if/then proverb.  If one pursues this, then one receives even more.  The path could not be clearer, and as we described it to our kids, the movie ‘Princess Bride’ came to mind.  The scene was at Miracle Max’s:  Fezzik and Inigo Montoya had just brought a lifeless Westley to Max’s door in need of a miracle.  When Max asked for payment, they only had 65 and the noble cause of ‘true love’ to offer.  Even though this ultimately became a game of denial to Max who, as explained by his wife Valerie, had his confidence to perform miracles shattered by Prince Humperdinck, it was only after he heard that the Prince would suffer if Westley was healed that he agreed to work for them.  Even though the promise of revenge would be enough to inspire Max’s aid, it remained clear that the pursuit of true love was the ‘noblest of causes’.

 

And yet when I invited my kids to look beyond Hollywood, where the story is scripted and the fairy tale ending exists, we were confronted with what happens when life, prosperity, and honor do not accompany the pursuit of righteousness and love.  We found the story of Job to be unshakably clear.  His was a story that matched the beginning of the proverb, but found death, poverty, and shame instead.  His misery of losing everyone and everything was topped with his health, Job 2:7-8, as it reads that Satan covered his body with boils.

 

My kids already have a ‘real life’, though thankfully lesser, example in watching me with my health and already intimately understood the failings of this proverb.  They already saw the gaping hole in its logic and heard its cry that begged to be fulfilled.  We then looked to the only One who can and has fulfilled it, Jesus, the Son of God.

 

This life was broken in the lives and actions of Adam and Eve, Genesis 3, but was fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus, 1 Corinthians 15.  Not only that, but we found that we are the ones pursued by God, John 3:16.  And we are the ones who become His righteousness through our faith in Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5:21.

 

Our salvation by God’s true love is the ’noblest of causes’.  Jesus fulfilled it and creates us anew free from sin to live eternally with Him beyond the tales of fairies.