The Songs as a Prayer

I feel a need to re-rant from Sunday. For the record, I really enjoyed teaching Sunday. I loved the conversation, the questions, the insights everyone brought with them and shared. I think some of what I said sounded a little novel, but I hope it bears repeating.

All the natural imagery in the Song of Songs is marvelous and beautiful. It serves not only as a backdrop or set for the lovers in the poem, but nature itself shares the stage, basking in beauty and glory. The lovers turn to all this natural imagery to explore and express their desires and discovery for and in one another.

In the poem, nature is harmonious, kind and gentle. Just like their love, nature is never overpowering, dominneering or dangerous. Such is hardly the truth in real life. The Song knows nature to be sweet and harmonious. But the Psalms know better. Job too knows of the fury and storms of nature. Both nature and relationships are rarely so safe and harmonious. Both are filled with times of storm and suffering.

Remember the Song is first shared and celebrated in a culture very different from our own, with its own practices and experiences of life and love. Couples are brought together by contract and arrangnement, not dating or mutual friends. They meet, marry and then fall in love. Rarely does someone immediately love and relish their new life with their mate. Instead, they learn to love, learn to celebrate, learn to desire this new person.

The Songs stand as a longing, a dream, a prayer – a way of being with the untapped passion, the unfulfilled longing of our lives. They are a way of saying, “Please, Please God.”

We live in a time and place where we have so much longing, so much pent up passion and desire – and yet do such a terrible job of focusing that energy and angst anywhere healthy. Surely, there’s a way that this ancient poetry can teach us how to live with that longing; how to shape our yearnings and desires into prayer and calling out to God.