'Song of Songs'

By Tyler Tankersley

When I was a kid, I sat through some very boring sermons. I did not grow up in churches that spoiled children by simply removing them from worship; I just had to sit there.

There were a variety of strategies to get through tedious sermons without going mad: I would doodle on offering envelopes, squint at the hanging lights to make them look like lasers, and I would even try to sneak action figures in my socks if my mother made me wear long pants that day.

If a sermon was especially dull, I would be forced to resort to grabbing the pew Bible and leafing through it to find something to keep my interest. I still remember the first time I flipped through the pages and landed on the Old Testament book called "Song of Songs" (also sometimes called "The Song of Solomon"). This book was unlike anything else I had read in the Bible. It felt like I had stumbled upon something I wasn't supposed to be reading. I loved it.

"Song of Songs" is a lyrical, Hebrew book of wisdom. Some people claim it was written by King Solomon, but we don't really know. What we do know is it is written from the perspective of two young lovers pledging their uninhibited affections for one another.

It's an incredibly honest depiction of love and desire. It's deeply romantic and Shakespearean in its poetry: "The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away" (Song of Songs 2:12-13).

The most interesting thing about "Song of Songs" is that it is one of only two books in the Bible (Esther being the other) in which God is not mentioned -- not once. Perhaps that's intentional. Perhaps God is present in this book, not in big and flashy ways, but in small, seemingly hidden ways. Perhaps God is most glorified in this book in the love that passes between these two people.

In her commentary on "Song of Songs," professor Ellen Davis says, "Cultivating a true love relationship, with a person or with God, calls forth sustained effort from the core of our being." In "Song of Songs" each of these two people must be intentional in their love for one another. It's a relationship that requires effort, work and heaps of grace.

"Song of Songs" teaches us that love is not just going to happen to us. Love is not a tree that is planted and then left to its own growing; love is a garden.

Love requires watering, weeding, pruning and caring. Love is not passive; love is active. Love is both a noun and a verb.