"Go to him, then," the Beast responded. Those four words spoke volumes.
Cogsworth later walked into the room with an air of triumphant expectancy as he declared to the Beast, "I must say that things are going swimmingly."
All hope vanished into thin air, however, when the Beast uttered the most significant line in the film. "I let her go," he confessed to his enchanted little clock.
As the reality of those words sunk in, Cogsworth shook himself and asked, "You did what?"
Can you imagine the impact of the Beast's admission? To let her go was to plunge his kingdom into another season of a cursed existence. To let her go meant that all hope was lost of ever becoming normally human again. To let her go meant that he forfeited his last, best chance of ever being loved. But he let her go. Why? "I had to," he said. "I love her."
The Beast understood that a lover does not hold the object of his love hostage to his possessive grasp.
Perhaps a similar scene played itself out in heaven when God let go the beautiful angel Lucifer, who rebelled against God, determined to go his own way.
"You did what?" Michael or Gabriel or some other angel might have asked, realizing that this action would bring untold misery and suffering upon God's creation.
What about you and me? Though God could force us to love Him, He lets us go. "I love them too much," He says. God loves us and allows us to go our own way, knowing full well that misery and suffering could be the result. Like Beauty, however, we have the option to come back, to change misery and suffering into joy and celebration.
Edited from Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks by Wayne Rice. Copyright 1994 by Youth Specialties, Inc.