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June 15 + Daily readings & notes

DAY 166

Young love.  It's the thing of life.  Movies. Imagination.  The Bible?  That's what it looks like. 

Let's get started with Song of Solomon and, hopefully, discover, truly, the answer to the long-held question: What's love got to do with it?


DAILY READINGS

Song of Solomon 1-4 & Psalm 11

DAILY NOTES

Song of Solomon 1
  • We get our first taste of what so much of the book is about in Verse 2: Your love is better.....
  • Even others (daughters of Jerusalem) admire and love the bride's husband (to be?).
  • Does she feel less worthy of others because of her appearance?
  • Verse 7 shows us that she desired to be with him.  She was not one "who is veiled beside the flocks."  That is, a woman of "low sexual morals."
Song of Solomon 2
  • Verse 2 tells us how the man feels about the women.  She is "a lily among bramble."
  • I've read two ideas about Verse 7.  That verse is repeated in Chapter 3.  First, the woman doesn't want her daydream to be interrupted by her friends.  She has just talked about how much she is in love and what she wishes her love would do (embrace).  Second, the idea could be that she wants to tell her love to not move too fast.  She wants their relationship to grow and mature.
Song of Solomon 3
  • This could be a dream.  Key Selena's I'll Be Dreaming
  • Is this a dream of a wedding or are they getting married?
Song of Solomon 4
  • We get it.  You think she's beautiful.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

I was surprised to learn that there are many sermons based on Song of Solomon.  Charles Spurgeon, for example, preached 59 sermons from this book.  I've preached once from the book and that was at a wedding.  There goes that idea of being the best preacher in history.

Of course, there's prayer.  But to take so much from a book like this also takes imagination.  

Love takes imagination, too.  One love imagines how to surprise another.  A spouse imagines what their life would be like without the other and, consequently, falls more in love.  

A disciple is trying to live in God's love and has to imagine a way to allow that love to help them forgive or love enemies.  

See how that works?  We need divine imagination.  Maybe reflecting on a book like this will help us to learn how to have that kind of imagination.  

Stay blessed...john

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