The Song of Songs
While becoming absorbed in Psalm 139 and allowing those ideas to lead and guide my current journey, its words becoming like the winding roads on a map of the countryside through which one is travelling, I turned some pages and found myself “by chance” in the Song of Songs. This is one amazing book. Here the lover woos his beloved and the dialogue traces their tender and intimate relationship through to its culmination in total self-giving and joy.
Although I write “by chance” I don’t really think it was accidental at all. There is more than a mere hint of purpose in this next discovery of the kind of love we encounter when we seek and find Him, the true lover of our souls.
It is not one kind of love, in accordance with our human categories, but all kinds as we perceive and define them… eros (desire), storge (affection), philia (friendship), and agape (charity) …which come together, woven in perfect combination, to express the completeness of divine love where nothing is held back. It is total, perfect, whole and immeasurable.
The symbolism may be a little difficult to comprehend without keeping in mind that the analogies are figurative rather than literal; that they are not intended primarily to be visual, but to correspond instead to quality and value. How otherwise could a woman be compared to a horse in Pharoah’s court and the comparison not be derogatory in intent… unless it is taken to mean that she is just the very best of her kind? Or a part of her body likened to two fawns, twins of a gazelle, if not suggesting a delightfully engaging youthfulness rather than the species’ own looks?
Thus knowing that, I read with my intuition uppermost, freely associating but knowingly so, and so tasting and savouring the sensuous references to nature and fruitfulness. There to be known was the joyful abundance where satiation and fulfilment are first dreamt then attained, where hope becomes reality, longing becomes ecstacy, and where mutual desire is finally consummated. Such was evocative of God’s great love for Israel, Christ’s love for His church, His love for each soul, the lover embracing His beloved, and the beloved responding in kind. There I found the same experience of being drawn to Him as before… that same yearning for absolutely everything to be seen and known, no holding back, but for Him to hold me, see and know me, to breathe into me those tender words of the lover: I love you.
It was no accident that I found myself in the Song of Songs after some time in Psalm 139, the winding roads of the map having taken me there as surely the Shepherd leads His sheep from one pasture to another. Accidents, like co-incidents, don’t happen on these spiritual journeys where our Father is sovereign, all our days known, and every hair on our heads counted. He searches and knows us, and His beloved are loved intimately, profoundly, and way beyond measure.
“I am my lover’s and my lover is mine” (Song of Songs 6:3)
