Thursday, May 12, 2011

Song of Solomon 5

7 comments:

Unknown said...

"this is my lover and my friend." v16

so beautiful again, the marriage relationship is such a gift, and so beautiful how it represents our relationship with Christ. The picture of her self centredness of not wanting to get out of bed to open the door for him, it sticks with me. Am I like that? Do I wallow in the attitude of wanting to be served, rather than to serve. If so I will be the one to suffer, as she did, when she found that by not "letting him in" she lost out on his presence.

Shailey said...

"But I said,'I have taken off my robe.Should I get dressed again?I have washed my feet should I get them soiled?'"v 3

The way the young woman is saying this it is like she wants her lover to come back later,sometimes we are like that to God,we think we can live without him.

"I opened to my lover,but he he was gone.I yearned for his voice!I searched for him,but I couldn't find him anywhere.I called to him, but there was no answer."v 6

If we leave God when he calls us and think we can go on living without God he will leave us and when we call for him he will not come for we have left him so he will leave us.

Unknown said...

more thoughts. Shailey got my wheels turning. how often do I drag my feet, not having the energy to "get up, open the door, and speak with my lover." I reject Him for other pursuits,or for no pursuits at all.

And yet, the beauty of God's love is this, that he says; “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”
Isaiah 49:15-16a

"For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself." 1 Sam 12:22

"if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" 2 Tim 2:13.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

and yet, as we learned in our small group reading last week, when we cut ourselves off from God, our father-child relationship with Him does not change, but our "relationship" with Him does suffer. When we refuse intimacy with the Lover of Our Souls, we seek to fill that void with something else, to our detriment and at the cost of a richer and fuller and more glorious relationship. In other words, we wallow with pigs when we could be seating ourselves at the banqueting table.

Unknown said...

"this is my lover and my friend." v16

so beautiful again, the marriage relationship is such a gift, and so beautiful how it represents our relationship with Christ. The picture of her self centredness of not wanting to get out of bed to open the door for him, it sticks with me. Am I like that? Do I wallow in the attitude of wanting to be served, rather than to serve. If so I will be the one to suffer, as she did, when she found that by not "letting him in" she lost out on his presence.

Shailey said...

But I said,'I have taken off my robe.Should I get dressed again?I have washed my feet should I get them soiled?'"v 3

The way the young woman is saying this it is like she wants her lover to come back later,sometimes we are like that to God,we think we can live without him.

"I opened to my lover,but he he was gone.I yearned for his voice!I searched for him,but I couldn't find him anywhere.I called to him, but there was no answer."v 6

If we leave God when he calls us and think we can go on living without God he will leave us and when we call for him he will not come for we have left him so he will leave us.

Unknown said...

more thoughts. Shailey got my wheels turning. how often do I drag my feet, not having the energy to "get up, open the door, and speak with my lover." I reject Him for other pursuits,or for no pursuits at all.

And yet, the beauty of God's love is this, that he says; “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”
Isaiah 49:15-16a

"For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself." 1 Sam 12:22

"if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" 2 Tim 2:13.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

and yet, as we learned in our small group reading last week, when we cut ourselves off from God, our father-child relationship with Him does not change, but our "relationship" with Him does suffer. When we refuse intimacy with the Lover of Our Souls, we seek to fill that void with something else, to our detriment and at the cost of a richer and fuller and more glorious relationship. In other words, we wallow with pigs when we could be seating ourselves at the banqueting table.

Unknown said...

Today, we see in our reading of 1 Chr. 28:9 "if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever." which brought up this discussion for me again.

copying this over from that thread.

my thoughts; first important to understand the context of who this was being said to, right? to Solomon, in light of his future role as King, nothing to do with salvation, actually to do with relationship.

"forsake" is azab in Hebrew, meaning includes relinquish, refuse, leave.

"cast you off" is zanach, meaning includes push aside, reject, forsake, remove far away off.

I think this lines up with the idea I was trying to express to Shailey after the Song of Solomon reading. The idea of if we shut the door in God's face, we are refusing relationship with Him and while that doesn't mean that our Father/child relationship with Him changes (he doesn't disown us) it DOES mean that our relationship SUFFERS. We are estranged. He will not force us to "let Him in".

I think there might be something more here that I wasn't seeing before, and I think that Shailey might have actually hit the nail on the head. He will indeed "remove far away off" in order that we might feel that loss and desire closeness with Him once again. Like when the woman wouldn't get up to open the door to her lover in Song of Solomon, he went away, then she was desirious of him, but he had distanced himself. Maybe Shailey was more right than I realized.

But the only bone I might have to pick is with the thought that "If we call for Him, He will not come." but then again, upon reflection, maybe it *is* this way. Maybe when we have refused Him he wants US to come to HIM. Maybe He does maintain that distance and require us to "make the first move" if you will. Not just cry out, "my God, My God, why have you you left me?"

This is all a level of thought I've never delved into before. Love it.