The one who loves God is known by God. (1 Cor. 8:3)
Last week, I wrote about the hope that can motivate us towards God's purpose for us.
Although the Song of Songs is on one level about the physical and emotional love between a man and a woman, the Church has usually interpreted the Beloved to represent either the soul or the Church, and the Lover to represent Christ.
Thus, I write this blog post to better understand our quest for God, in the hope that I may love God more. (If anyone else benefits from this, then even better!)
So our passage begins:
All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but could not find him.
I will get up now and go about the city,
through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
So I looked for him and did not find him.
The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
'Have you seen the one my heart loves?'
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found the one my heart loves.
(Song of Songs 3:1-3)
This passage describes a long night in which the Beloved searches for her Lover.
Like the Beloved in this passage, sometimes I feel far from God--whether through my own actions or thoughts that have barricaded me from him, or for reasons I don't know.
Although all social divisions are replaced by a new creation in Christ (Gal. 3:28; 6:15), how distant that new creation sometimes feels, even within the Church, the very people called to be peacemakers (Matt. 5:9; 2 Cor. 5:16-19)!
Do times of spiritual dryness prompt me to seek God?
Does this absence of God's peace from our nations and communities compel us to leave behind our comforts to repent, praying for God's kingdom to come?
The extent to which they do, perhaps, shows our love for God.
Where do we not expect to find God?
The Woman looks throughout the streets and town squares, but does not find her Lover there.
This prompts me to ask where God is not. What might the streets or town squares represent? Where are unwise places to look for God?
When I feel distant from God, for example, I don't expect to find him by scrolling through Amazon.com or my Facebook newsfeed. Nor do I travel to a city centre, with all its advertisements and shops clamouring for my attention and money, expecting to rekindle my relationship with God there.
What I am saying, though, is that such places tend to distract my inward gaze towards God. Even if God did try to speak to me through Facebook, I might be too distracted by the video advert that has just begun playing to pay attention to God.
If we consider Jesus' earthly ministry, we see that even he, the Son of God, needed to regularly seek God the Father away from the demands of the crowds. He did this through prayer, often alone in wild places (e.g. Mark 1:35-37) and also through worshipping at the temple and in synagogues (e.g. Luke 4:14-16).
Where might we find God?
After the Woman fails to find her Lover in the streets and squares, she is found by guards making their rounds. She asks if they have seen him, and soon after they pass, she finds him at last and brings him home (v. 4).
One interpretation is that the guards represent those who witness to Christ: the prophets, apostles and evangelists, whose words we find in the scriptures.
Thus, through prayerfully reading the scriptures, we can put ourselves in a place where every page helps us find Christ.
The Law and the Prophets ask questions that are answered in Jesus the Messiah (Matt. 5:17-18).
The Psalms teach us how to speak directly with God, sharing the same prayers that Christ himself has prayed.
The Gospels are windows through which the light of Christ shines on us, exposing our inner sickness and showing us the path to life.
The Epistles are stained-glass windows revealing the mind of Christ to us through the Saints who wrote them.
Further, the first Christians experienced Christ in their midst when they gathered regularly to learn from the apostles, fellowship together, break bread and pray (Acts 2:42). So too, we can find God when we worship him together, and so receive energy to live out the Gospel Life that we read about in scripture.
While reflecting on this passage from the Song of Songs, one question remains for me: does the Beloved find her Lover, or does the Lover find his Beloved?
The text suggests the Beloved finds her Lover: 'I found the one my heart loves' (v. 3). But if we apply this to our quest for Christ, how can this be? How can I, a mere human, ever claim to find the One who has created and will restore all things (Acts 3:21), as though God were lost and not I?
Rather, we are the lost sheep for whom the Good Shepherd leaves the 99 other sheep (Matt. 18:12-14). We are saved by God's mercy through faith in Christ, not through any works that we do (Eph. 2:8-9).
Note: I am not saying that we should merely accept being found, and then do nothing but sit on our hands until Christ returns. Like any relationship, our participation is required. For example, a baby does nothing to earn the right to be born, become their parents' child or receive their nurture and support. However, as the baby grows older, they learn how to honour their parents and respond in love.
What I am saying is, we are only able to love God and follow his commands because God first loved us (see 1 John 4:19).
I believe this question, then, of who finds whom, is answered in a passage in the Gospel of John (20:10-18), where the Lover is revealed to be Christ and the Beloved is one of his disciples. Through this passage, too, we can better understand our own relationship with Christ.
On the morning of his resurrection, Jesus meets a woman who has been desperately looking for him through the long night of her grief.
'Who is it you are looking for?' he asks her.
She does not answer him directly, nor does she recognise him until he speaks her name.
At last she discovers that the One she has been looking for has already found her.
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