Fire & Rain

By Matt

I read: Song of Songs 7-8

Song of Song is a highly visual book, but it's not until this final chapter that we find what I consider the most impressive and enduring images:

Love is invincible facing dangers and death.
Passion laughs at the terrors of hell.
The fire of love stops at nothing--
it sweeps everything before it.
Flood waters can't drown love,
torrents of rain can't put it out. (8:6-8)

Pretty impressive, eh? As it's said in 1 John 4:18, "perfect love drives out fear," and the images of this passage are the images of perfect love: invincible, unafraid, consuming, and inextinguishable. Love isn't afraid of what's to come because it knows it's already won that battle. And if you don't have to worry about the future, there's nothing to worry about in the past.

So, where do we run into problems then? When we don't believe that love is capable or equipped to handle with what life throws at it. But not only is that a shortchanging of love, that's a shortchanging of ourselves. In fact, the true enemies of love (monotony, complacency, ignorance) only can gain a foothold when love isn't allowed to be present. Thankfully God equips us with what we need to know and gives us the passion to let love do its things when our hearts are open.

And really that's all God ever asks of us: open hearts to love as he first loved us.