In Solomon Chapter 3, the Shullamite woman discovers that she cannot find the one her heart loves. Love possesses a profound nature, one which supersedes lust, liking or any other mild and fleeting emotion. It is completely overwhelming. Song of Solomon 8:6 indicates that it is as strong as death with jealousy as enduring as the grave. It is comprised of coals of fire with a most vehement flame.
This love is intense. The kind of intensity which shouldn’t be trivialised, underestimated or taken for granted. So potent is it, that the woman charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken it prematurely. The daughters of Jerusalem experience the love of Solomon who personifies Christ in this text. They in turn are expected to behold Him. Love is one of God’s most expressed qualities to us and we are able to replicate that heart most thoroughly when we experience it in immensity from Him. We can only do that by investing much time with Him so that we might know Him, in prayer, in His presence and in His Word.
Essentially, this love is sacrificial. It aroused such a restlessness and distress in the Shullamite that she jeopardised her own safety in search of him. She roamed the city during the dangerous space of the night with such desperation that the watchmen found her and she told them her plight. They must have been total strangers, the equivalent of the police perhaps but her concern was so great that she even asked the people she found about the whereabouts of her Beloved.
She repeatedly calls Him whom my soul loveth. It’s so repetitive it’s almost obsessive. The church is tied inextricably to Christ. He is the only One the eyes of the Bride are set squarely on. She has no desire for anything else and when she has laid hold upon Him the key thing to note is that she DOES NOT LET GO. Many things will tempt us and are dangled before us, we will be distracted, we will become tired, sometimes distraught. But we must never lose hold on our beloved. This is the kind of “magnificent obsession” as Mike Bickle calls it, we should have for our Lord.
I charge all of us today then to set our mind on Christ. If we are in a dry spell where we feel that we cannot find Him do not for any reason stop looking. He beckons us to seek and we will find. It may seem impossible for a while but He will be found. Keep His statutes, receive His love, and return it. Deeply, richly, strongly.
Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me
-Samuel Francis
The Light in the Cracks 