SEPTEMBER REFLECTION: Let me hear your voice – Song of Songs 8:6-7; 13.
SEPTEMBER LET ME HEAR YOUR VOICE
Song of Songs 8: 5-7; 13
As we start out this year, we begin with a few verses from a book of the Bible that is rarely read. I think this is partly because we find it, on a first and probably superficial reading, too graphic, too intimate, even embarrassing. But if we can sit with it long enough to put our particular hang-ups to one side, what we find here is so amazing – the treasure of the deep, unfathomable well of God’s love for us and his desire for an ever deepening, reciprocal intimacy with us.
There are many phrases or ‘one-liners’ that we will be familiar with from this Song, such as the assurance of our belovedness, as in ‘I am my beloved’s and he is mine’, or the hope found in the words ‘the winter is past and the spring rains have come’. Traditionally the interpretation has been that of an allegory of the love between Christ and the Church, God’s love for us, both as individuals and for his people as a whole. But it is to the final chapter that I return most often. Here in verses 6 and 7 we have a powerful description of the endurance, the constancy and the passion of a mature and everlasting love. Yet even these words cannot fully describe the breadth, length, depth and height of God’s love. Perhaps in this life we catch fleeting glimpses of it in unexpected moments or in a close and beloved relationship, but, ultimately, we are left with something of an ache or yearning for that something more that we sense is still beckoning us onward. We know, in a place beyond all formal knowledge, that we are somehow incomplete; we have not reached that union that Jesus prayed for on the night before he died. We probably never will this side of death. This should not produce in us feelings of despair or despondency but rather it can keep us journeying. It is possible to reach a greater degree of awakening to the all-pervading loving presence of the God in whom everything and everyone belongs. And we do this, largely, not by striving, but, paradoxically, by letting go. “If someone tried to buy love with everything they owned, their offer would be utterly despised.” (Verse 7)
More recently I have been alerted to a different verse, one that I had never particularly noticed before, verse 13. “O my beloved, lingering in the gardens, your companions are fortunate to hear your voice. Let me hear it too.” The garden, in its stillness and beauty, in Scripture is at least twice described as the setting for meeting with God, for the intimate communion for which our hearts are longing. It is in the garden in the third chapter of Genesis that God walks and meets with his beloved, named as Adam and Eve. It is where he also searches for them. It is in the garden on the first Easter morning that Mary Magdalene, in her grief, speaks to the ‘gardener’. When she hears his voice calling her by her name, she recognises her risen Lord, her beloved.
If our hearts are on the cusp of a deepening awakening, then we need the ‘garden’. Perhaps literally this is not possible for many. But what is needed is that still, quiet place that, because of Presence, becomes beautiful. We sometimes desperately want to hear God speak to us, to hear his voice, to reassure us, to guide us, to protect us. And we can use a lot of words, pleading and asking and feel that we are being met with a deafening silence. But if we linger in the garden, his voice may be the sound of silence, or a gentle whisper, or the unspoken communication that only those who truly love will recognise. And there’s something else here. We may think our longing to hear God’s voice is greater than anyone else’s. There is one whose longing is greater. It is God’s longing for us. It is he who also says to us, “O my beloved, lingering in the gardens, your companions are fortunate to hear your voice. Let me hear it too.” Not the thousands of words voicing our petitions, though they are important and have their proper place, but the simple gentle whisper back to our Beloved, “I love you.”
Most of the time our journey of faith may seem to us to be a dry or desert place. But if we choose to linger in wherever our special ‘garden’ is, then gradually we will find our hearts awakening, we will begin to see things differently and people, encountering us, will look with awe at one another and say, as the writer in the Song of Songs says (in verse 5a), “Who is this, coming up from the desert, leaning on her lover?”
Suggestions for Reflection:
Where or what is the ‘garden’ in your life?
How do we identify the voice of the Beloved?
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