Thursday, April 16, 2020

Hidden Brides and Little Foxes


Thursday, April 16, 2020
The Young Woman

My lover said to me, “Rise up, my darling!  Come away with me, my fair one!  Look, the winter is past, and the rains are over and gone.  The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come, and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air.  The fig trees are forming young fruit, and the fragrant grapevines are blossoming.  

The Young Man

Rise up, my darling!  Come away with me, my fair one!”  My dove is hiding behind the rocks, behind an outcrop on the cliff.  Let me see your face; let me hear your voice.  For your voice is pleasant, and your face is lovely. 

Young Women of Jerusalem

Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming!  Song of Solomon 2:10-15

There are a lot of interpretations for The Song.  There is relatively modern thought that it is just straightforward poetry about love.  Solomon was not only wise he was a brilliant composer of artistic bent.  Some see the Shulamite version where Solomon is so captured by the princess of Ethiopia, he attempts to win her heart by whisking her away to Jerusalem, and dazzling her with his accomplishments, but she is in love with another.  And there is also the metaphor for God as the Bridegroom, with Israel as His bride.  Of course many New Testament era scholars also accept this for the church as the Bride of Christ.  I’m not taking issue with any of this thinking. 
This morning I’m seeing in Solomon’s verse the hidden bride, the church behind the rocks, with her lovelier side of beauty nearly altogether unseen by the rest of the world.  In recent years the gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach is growing because the bride, Christ’s church, looks bedraggled and haggard with all her knock-down, drag-out brawling over doctrines, and who is fit to do whatever.  The little foxes of selfishness and hedonism are taking bites out of the bride and knocking a good bit of luster off the wedding pictures.
I’ve never been a wedding planner, or coordinator, but I’ve been close enough to weddings for a long time to know there’s a lot of holding-it-together that happens on the big day.  There are wardrobe failures, missing people and forgotten essentials to be found.  And if you throw-in melt downs from flower girls, or a ring-bearing 4-year-old boy who would rather be doing anything than wearing shiny shoes that hurt and a tuxedo (whatever that might be)…it’s a wonder you ever get to the I do’s.
Drama is a very real part of life; I think we all know that.  But the church is not a place for the kind of drama with which we’ve all become familiar – that kind of drama, caused by selfish control issues, rigid religiosity, and tradition-bound gate-keepers who couldn’t recognize a new wineskin if it jumped out from their musty closet and screamed, use me before it’s too late, or that new wine will spill all over your carpeted faith.
The Bride has been fighting again is how Chuck Swindoll so picturesquely characterized the lack of love we see in a bride, the church, which fails in her lover’s request to Rise up, my darling, come away with me….  Instead, the bride now hears (and fears) the same voice heard so long ago in that beautiful garden, when forbidden fruit was sweeter than obedience:  Where are you, my darling?  What have you done? 
For You Today
The response of one who is loved is, rightly, to love.  And so, it is not up for debate what the church needs to do as the object of God’s love.  What the church needs to do is rise up like the “darling” she was created to be and bring that beautiful face of loving service out from behind the rocks.
We know what she must do; the real question is, will she do it?
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
Title Image:  Pixabay.com      Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For other posts on The Song of Solomon 2 see Arise and Foxes and Grapes

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