Monday: The Loves of the Love Song
Describe various aspects of love presented in the Song of Solomon. Song of Sol. 1:2, Song of Sol. 1:13; Song of Sol. 2:10-13, Song of Sol. 2:16; Song of Sol. 3:11; Song of Sol. 4:1-7; Song of Sol. 5:16; Song of Sol. 6:6; Song of Sol. 7:1-9; Song of Sol. 8:6-7.
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The Song of Solomon shows how friends spend time together, communicate openly, and care about each other. In the Song of Solomon, two good friends become married partners. The wife declares, “This is my friend” (Song of Sol. 5:16, NKJV). The word friendexpresses companionship and friendship without the overtones of sexual partnership. Happy is the husband or wife whose spouse is a dear friend.
Throughout the poem, intimate compliments and loving gestures convey the strong attraction, the physical and emotional delight that the male and female find in each other. The natural intimacies of romantic love are a gift of the Creator, to help partners bond closely to each other in marriage. As partners are open to the work of divine love in their hearts, their human love is “refined and purified, elevated and ennobled”. – Ellen G. White, The Adventist Home, p. 99.
These verses also convey the loftiest of thoughts about love. True love, though, is not natural to the human heart; it is a gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). Such love bonds husband and wife in a lasting union. It is the committed love so desperately needed in the parent-child relationship to build a sense of trust in the young. It is the self-giving love that binds believers together in the body of Christ. The Song of Solomon calls us to make this love an active force in our relationships with our spouses.
| How does this kind of intimacy reflect, in its own way, the kind of intimacy we can have with God? What are some parallels one can draw (for example, spending time, giving completely of ourselves, et cetera)? What other parallels are there? |
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That has to be one of the most important quotable statements in this series of lessons. If you are not marrying your best friend, what on earth are you thinking? For those of us who are married, it is worth remembering the things that make friendship so valuable.
I have mentioned before that Carmel and I were separated by circumstances in different countries for almost the entire period of our engagement. This was back in the days when there was no email and an overseas phone call had to be booked and cost an arm and a leg. The only connection we had in that period was letter-writing. That long distant communication became so important as we shared our thoughts and ideas, the events of our lives, and the frustrations we experienced. (I wish I had kept all that correspondence, it would have made a great book for our grandkids to read when we have gone) That long-distance communication cemented our friendship. Without the distraction of physical presence, the only recourse we had was to explore one another's minds. (There is a spiritual application here too.)
Now I am not recommending that everyone is separated throughout their engagement. (When we got back together again a week before the wedding, Carmel was so physically shy of me that she would not even hold my hand for a while!) It just happened to be the circumstance we found ourselves in and we found that it gave us a greater opportunity to understand one another. And it the long run the experience proved to have been beneficial.
In this series of lessons we often concentrate on what we should not be doing in family and marriage relationships, but there are so many important positive principles that we should expore and develop to improve our relationships with one another.
As in anyone you love you feel peace within oneself to know you have someone there for you, during difficult times, sad times and joyful times. At times you feel the energy of His presence when you pray. When I feel He is not near I feel sad. I am sure He hears me though, I do repeat over and over a lot of the same stuff so mostly He comes around when I have something new to say or ask Him. He may be silent at times but He is always near.
Everybody is different. And sometimes it is hard to explain the reasons of the heart. We all have limitations and it might take years for us to recognize them, in order to fully understand the limitations of our partner too. Some people do not allow themselves to be fully open, even when sex is involved. To develop a friendship with the spouse is necessary, but not always this type of friendship is completely rewarded. We are living in a crazy world. Families are broken and the generations are quite lost regarding marriage relationships. I'd say that focusing on the love of God in the heart may be perhaps 50% (or more) of the success in this area! The rest is related to the choices we make everyday! After basically 20 years of marriage I've been learning to answer the question differently, "do you want to have the reason, or to be happy?"
JC I am in agreement with you. I looked around in the church and realized that many people say they are Christians but they are not happy with their spouse(s). They are holding on because it would be a sin to do the dishonorable thing. Some couples find better friendship in others. Sometimes because of how they were cultured it has impacted their relationship in a negative way. I consider marriage/relationship a work of a lifetime. Always learning and always having to find ways of keeping it interesting.