Wesley and Buttercup were in love – true love.
But when Wesley sails away to find his fortune, he is killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Without true love, Buttercup can’t keep going. Years later, she is taken to a castle to marry an evil prince, who plots to kill her.
Just in time, Wesley comes back to rescue her – but now he is the Dread Pirate Roberts.
At first, Buttercup does not recognize him.
Roberts/Wesley needs to know if she ever truly loved him. With a bitter heart, she recounts the pain of losing Wesley.
Then he retorts, “Life is pain, anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.”
How true. But why?
Why does life have so much pain? If God loves us, why do we go through such difficult times? Should not God pave the road of life for us?
A partial answer is found in the very nature of God. The Bible says that God is love. This is his core. Not a me-first kind of “love,” but the kind that Wesley and Buttercup had in Princess Bride.
Most of us know little of this kind of love.
True love – God’s kind of love – is centred on others. It gives so that others might be blessed. It is selfless, kind and without ego.
The Bible says that God cares for us deeply. He cares for us so much that he gave his Son to die for us. He cares for us so much that he wants us to live with him forever in heaven and made a way for us to get there.
But he also wants us to be rich in heaven. Love is like the coin of heaven. Beauty, money and talents won’t matter when we get to heaven. What will matter is that we are filled with true love.
How do we become more loving?
The Bible says that love is patient, kind, long-suffering, forgiving, merciful.
How do we learn patience? We learn patience when something (or someone) comes into our life to test it.
The more tests we have, the more chances we have to be patient.
(This aspect of love can only grow on the earth. In heaven, there will be nothing to try our patience.)
Similarly, we learn to become a forgiving person when many people wrong us.
(In heaven we will not be wronged.)
The same is true for all aspects of love.
So if God wants us to develop a deep and eternal love, it is necessary that we have many struggles.
Pain and trials are not a sign that God has forsaken us.
On the contrary, they may be a sign that God values us.
And God is not selling us anything.
He just loves us.
John Martens, pastor, The Connection.