People: Elinor, Marianne, Mrs. Jennings
Text: While Elinor and Marianne were continuing to explore the depths of Willoughby’s motivations and attitudes, Mrs. Jennings had been out visiting friends and picking up a juicy tidbit of gossip. No sooner was she home than she decided to share it with the girls. Although she was a flighty sort of woman, Mrs. Jennings deeply cared for those in her circle.
The conversation went something like this.
She walked in the room with a look of real concern. “How do you do, my dear?” She said this with greatest compassion to Marianne, who turned away her face without attempting to answer. “How is she, Miss Dashwood? Poor thing! She looks very bad. No wonder. Aye, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon-a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if it is true, he has used a young woman of my acquaintance abominably ill, and I wish with all my heart his wife may plague his heart out.”
“The lady then,” said Miss Dashwood, “Miss Grey I think you called her-is very rich?”
“Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? A smart, stylish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well. She married a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich together.”
Emotion: clarity
Insight: Proverbs 21:2 knows motivations, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.”
The truth comes out! And leave it to Mrs. Jennings to be the one to discover it. As a well-connected society friend, Mrs. Jennings learned Willoughby’s motivation for switching his love from Marianne to a Miss Grey: money. Money is a great motivator when it comes to issues of the heart. Willoughby loved Marianne until the catalyst of money became an issue. Marianne was practically penniless. Miss Grey had enough to feed an entire village for a lifetime. All of the coldness in his letter was merely a gauge to see the truth in his heart.
Not many of us are very rich. Some of us are comfortable. Others have nice things. But we must always remember that there is One Who can read the internal motives: God. Willoughby may have believed that his behaviors and habits were clean, but God gets down to the thoughts and intentions. If God were to weigh Willoughby’s heart, what would be the result? If we ever find ourselves and our hopes displaced by money and the love for it, may we find comfort and justice in the fact that God sees our soul. He sees the depths of the heart of the offender, and He sees the wounds of the heart of the offended. And let us always find solace in the perfect love and justice of our Perfect God.
Comments