Love's Acid Test
The headline of a story told by Betty Cuniberti in the Los Angeles Times about a determined young man named Keith Ruff read, “MAN SPENDS $20,000 TRYING TO WIN HAND OF GIRL WHO CAN SAY NO.”
Portions of the story went as follows:
A love-struck man holed up in a $200-a-day Washington hotel has spent, at latest estimate, close to $20,000 demonstrating to his beloved that he won’t take “no” for an answer to his marriage proposal.
On bended knee on Christmas Day, 35-year old Keith Ruff, once a stockbroker in Beverly Hills, proposed marriage to 20-year old Karine Bolstein. He had met her in a shoe store. The pair had gone out a few times in a two-month period before the proposal.
To his proposal, she looked down and said, “No.”
Since then, Ruff has remained in Washington and demonstrated his wish that she reconsider. He is, he thinks, close to spending all his money.
The tokens of his affections include a Learjet, placed on standby at the airport “in case she wanted to ride around;” between 3,000 and 5,000 flowers; a limousine equipped with a television parked outside her door; a gold ring; $200 worth of beverages; catered lobster dinners; musicians to serenade her; a clown to amuse her younger brother; a man dressed as Prince Charming bearing a glass slipper; cookies, candy, and perfume; and sandwich-sign wearers walking around her home and the restaurant where Bolstein works conveying the message “Mr. Dennis Keith Ruff LOVES Ms. Karine Bolstein.”
Ruff says he will spend his last dime and will beg for money if he has to, that he will “keep on trying for 10 years, 20 years. I’ll ask her to marry me 50,000 times. It doesn’t matter how many times she says no. I will do everything in my power that’s not absurd or against a reasonable law. I wouldn’t stop if she became a nun. I’ve never felt this way before.”
Bolstein, meanwhile, said she is flattered, but too young to get married. She said the house looks like a funeral parlor.
Ruff said, “I don’t want to force her to love me, but I can’t stop.”
Ruff said he spends a lot of time in his hotel room planning what to do next and occasionally crying. “Reality to me is disturbing,” he said. “I’d rather close my eyes and see her face. I’m living with hope and some very big bills.”
Two verses come to my mind after reading about Mr. Ruff. Song of Solomon 8:7 says, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” And I Corinthians 13:13b reads, “But the greatest of these is charity.”
If love is waning for your Saviour or your partner in marriage, Mr. Ruff has given us some insight of what it means to be helplessly and hopelessly in love:
1. Where love is concerned, money loses its attraction.
2. When one is in love, he or she is consumed with thoughts only of one love.
3. When one is in love, time is not a qualifying factor.
-Pastor Pope-