November 22, 2013
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Bad Dream, Renewed Love

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Opening Prayer

Most Holy God, lead me today from Your Word to joyfully follow Jesus and obey Your will for me.

Read Song of Songs 5:2-6:3

[2]She I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” [3] I have taken off my robe- must I put it on again? I have washed my feet- must I soil them again? [4] My beloved thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. [5] I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. [6] I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer. [7] The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls! [8] Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you- if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love. [9]Friends How is your beloved better than others, most beautiful of women? How is your beloved better than others, that you so charge us? [10]She My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. [11] His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven. [12] His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels. [13] His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh. [14] His arms are rods of gold set with topaz. His body is like polished ivory decorated with lapis lazuli. [15] His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars. [16] His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem. [1]Friends Where has your beloved gone, most beautiful of women? Which way did your beloved turn, that we may look for him with you? [2]She My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies. [3] I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies.

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION

Reflect

“However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (Eph. 5:33). Radical, wise words, indeed.

Today’s reading echoes some of the feelings of chapter 3, but it is more disturbing (5:6, for example). She cannot cling onto her beloved; he seems to have turned and gone. She runs after him and is beaten up and robbed. The story continues in the friends’ questions: what is so special about this one? And so she tells them, and this time it’s the male blazon, with an interesting mixture of the strong man (e.g. 5:15) and something altogether softer (e.g. 5:13). The images of masculinity here are altogether more complex than the prophet/priest/warrior types elsewhere in the Old Testament. The culture of the reigns of David and Solomon is perhaps closest to some of the feelings in the Song, exciting and yet openly susceptible to sin: both men were clearly chosen by God, and were both immensely gifted, yet dangerously flawed. We have here an inspired account of how people feel when they are in love, not necessarily how they ought to behave.

Commentators like the sixteenth-century mystic John of the Cross discuss the sickness or faintness of 5:8 as a malady that can only be cured by union with the beloved, that is God: “the malady of love is incurable, except in thy presence and before thy face.” … Another explanation of these words is this: “he who feels this malady of love–that is, a failure of it–has an evidence in himself that he has some love, because he ascertains what is deficient in him by that which he possesses” (John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle).  Our love for God, and our sense of his love for us, may be incomplete, and we can lament that incompleteness–but even that is evidence that we want and need more.

Apply

The passionate love here is a picture of Christ’s love for the church. If married, apply it to your marriage and relationship with Christ. If single, apply it to the latter.

Closing prayer

Lord, help me make my love for You deeper and more in tune with You. And deepen my relationships with others.

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