Today is Shakespeare’s birth and death date. Some, may quibble and say he was born on the 23rd, but who cares? He was a writer who learned from life, condensed stories of pride (hubris), intrigue, power, humor, and man’s inhumanity to man, and created characters representative of all aspects of man and the troubles he can cause. Our leaders today should read Hamlet and Macbeth and Lear and gain insight into how to govern, and the pitfalls of getting it wrong.
The Bible has a lot to say about these things, for after all, God created man in His image, and until man broke His law, he could have gotten it right. But no, we succumbed to sin, and continue, even though we should know better by now, to live sinfully. We let our short-term goals decide our actions, we judge and condemn others who are also God’s children, and we selfishly look at our opinions as truth.
Here’s what God says in John 15:5-8. “Yes, I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in Me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are My true disciples. This brings great glory to My Father.”These are the true heroes and heroines, and it’s not mere playacting with all its artificiality and set roles. Each day is a new opportunity to write our own life’s story, to God’s glory.
I’m not sure such redemption came to many of Shakespeare’s iconic characters. They never pretended to be God’s ambassadors and succumbed to all the tragedies life has to offer. But, he taught us to think about the human condition, man creating his own kingdoms and serfdoms, and that most self-centered choices lead to catastrophe and tragedy.
Isaiah shows us the path we should, however, walk, and how we can react to tragedy. In chapter 61, he writes: “He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come. He will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair. For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for His own glory.”
Now that’s how we want our dramas to play out, isn’t it? Today, walk through this life in the confidence that we are not mere players, strutting about on the stage of life, but that we have a higher purpose, and while our life’s play may not become famous and quoted through centuries, it is the role we’re playing eternally that really counts. Remember the verse from yesterday? “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18) That, my dear readers, is the role I want, and Shakespeare never, to my knowledge, caught Jesus’s story and told the consequential story of triumph. Alas, I fear, I may never get to ask him the eternal questions in paradise, unless God saved him as one of his own. I’d have many “why did you do that in Act III scene 2” questions for him.
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