My lover spoke out and said to me: “Arise my friend, my fair one, go.  For, look, winter has passed the rain has gone away.  Buds can be seen in the land, the nightingale’s season has come and the turtledove’s voice is heard in our land.  The fig tree has put forth its green fruit and the vines in blossom waft fragrance.  Arise and go, my friend, my fair one, go forth.”  Song of Songs 2:10-13 (Alter Translation)

Earlier this week I celebrated a birthday, and while I certainly celebrate completing another trip around the sun and the health I enjoy today, what made my birthday particularly wonderful was so many friends taking the time to contact me.  Close friends who live in faraway places took the time to call and I loved talking with each of them.  Others sent text messages and I loved engaging in exchanges with them. Others sent messages through social media, and it warms my heart to reconnect with each person, including people from the variety of chapters of my life, and to recall the flood of memories each evokes.  Had I been alone with no contact with anyone that day, my birthday would have been just another day.  The relationships we share and our renewed connection made the day special, and our relationships make life special.

As I sit this morning watching the sun rise, listening to birds sing their morning songs, reflecting on my warmed heart, I am reminded that God has lived in eternal relationship and the joy we experience through our relationships is another indication that we really are created in God’s image.  I ponder my daughter’s wedding planned to take place later this week, the covenant with God joining two as one, bonds of unity compared to the Holy Trinity, love compared to the love experienced by Christ Jesus and His holy church, uniting of families, and the beautiful unity of it all founded on God’s holy love.  The thoughts roll in my mind, while I turn to the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs, depending on your translation, and I am once again amazed that God includes a book of love poems in His holy word.  God celebrates human love and loving human relationships.  He celebrates loving bonds of friendship; He celebrates protective love; He celebrates romantic love; and He is agape love.  Isn’t it awesome that God, the Creator of the universe, the holy One includes love poems in His holy word?

This celebration of human passion and sensuality causes me to see God and His love from a different perspective. The message of the Gospel involves God’s loving grace and mercy, but we often consider the message in the context of sin and wrath.  Here, in the beautiful love poems set forth in His holy word, we see passionate love celebrated, and when viewed allegorically depicting the love of Christ Jesus for the body of His believers, His holy church, we are able to see His love from an entirely different perspective involving passion and desire.  Knowing that earthly examples attempting to communicate the heavenly fall tremendously short, I cannot imagine the passion and desire actually involved in His love, and when viewed from this perspective my desire to experience Him grows.

God’s holy word is beautiful, cohesive and consistent.  God is love and He celebrates loving relationships to the extent of including love poems in His holy word.  Love is not a task to be reluctantly endured or painfully checked off a to-do list.  We should desire and celebrate the love that is only available in and through Christ Jesus with the passion depicted in the poems.

The Song of Solomon begins saying, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your loving is better than wine.  For fragrance your oils are goodly, poured oil is your name.  And so the young women love you” (Song of Songs 1:1-3).  Have you experienced that sort of passionate desire for another?  Have you experienced that sort of passionate desire for Christ Jesus?

I encourage you to read the anthology of love poems set forth as the Song of Solomon, to seek Him with the passion the book inspires, and to passionately re-engage with the love of Christ Jesus as a characteristic to embrace and celebrate.