Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does: do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, August 14, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Fools rush in. So goes the song. It can be easy to mistake infatuation for love, momentary hormone-driven urges for depth of relationship. I love this last verse of today’s text (which is my absolute favorite passage in Song of Solomon!). After the woman goes seeking after “him whom my soul loves” all over town, and finally finds him, she urges all lovers and beloved to be patient, to not dive headlong into what might seem, in the moment, to be God’s intended relationship. Instead, we ought to wait, as she did, to find the one whom our soul loves. Our soul. Not just our bodies or our minds. The truest, deepest, most holy relationship between lovers is at the level of our souls—a connection at such depth that it transcends the physical. It takes time, and perhaps a great deal of searching, as in the poem, to find the one whom our soul loves. But the reward for our patience can be more than we could have possibly imagined.
How did I know/do I know/will I know when I have found the one whom my soul loves?
