Series : Living Each Day Before God – A Journey of Purpose and Grace 

Love That Costs Something

Have you ever encountered a story that lingers in your heart long after the final sentence? Some stories entertain us briefly. Others quietly reshape how we see love, sacrifice, and what truly matters. For me, one such story was The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.

As a child, I was mesmerized by the golden statue of the Prince standing high above the city, his body covered in gold leaf, sapphires for eyes, and a ruby gleaming on his sword. From his great height, he could see the suffering he had never known while alive. His heart broke for the poor: the seamstress with her feverish child, the young playwright too cold to write, the little match girl trembling in the night.

Unable to move, the Prince asked a swallow, who had delayed his journey to Egypt, to carry his treasures to those in need. One by one, the swallow plucked the ruby, the sapphires, and the gold leaf from the statue and distributed them. With each gift, the Prince grew dull and grey. With each act of obedience, the swallow grew weaker in the cold.

Yet love held them together. The swallow chose to stay, even when winter came. In the end, he died at the Prince’s feet. At that moment, a strange crack split the Prince’s leaden heart in two.

The next morning, the townspeople noticed the statue’s loss of beauty. “How shabby the Happy Prince looks!” they said. No longer impressed by outward splendor, they ordered the statue torn down and thrown onto a rubbish heap. The broken lead heart would not melt in the furnace, so it too was discarded in the garbage alongside the lifeless swallow.

As a child, this part unsettled me deeply. How could such love be treated as worthless? How could sacrifice end in rejection?

But then comes heaven’s perspective.

God asked His angels to bring Him the two most precious things in the city. The angel returned with the leaden heart of the Happy Prince and the dead swallow. And God said they had chosen rightly, for in His garden of Paradise the little bird would sing forever, and in His city of gold the Prince would praise Him.

That ending changed me. It taught me that heaven measures value differently than earth does.

Years later, I began to understand how this story echoes the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:19–21: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The Prince lost his gold but revealed his heart. The swallow lost his life but gained eternal honor. Their love cost them everything, but heaven called it precious.

And does this not reflect Christ? His love was not ornamental. It was sacrificial. He was stripped, rejected, and discarded by the world, yet exalted by the Father. True wealth is found not in what we preserve, but in what we pour out.

So now I ask myself, and you,who needs love from us that costs something? Not leftover love. Not convenient kindness. But love that requires time, pride, comfort, or resources.

Perhaps the world may not applaud it. It may even seem unnoticed. But heaven sees differently.

May we seek God’s perspective on earthly treasures. May we learn to value what He calls precious. In the end, it is not gold that lasts, but hearts given in love.