Over the course of the blogs about the Song of Solomon, we have aimed to highlight the love of God in Jesus, as our Bridegroom, and that He is returning soon to the earth. Everyone who trusts Jesus belongs to that Bride but not everyone will be at the marriage supper of the Lamb because some will be standing outside hoping to get invited in.
Which brings me to today –the Bride of Jesus. The course of Covid has highlighted what has really been going on in people’s hearts. I’d like to assume that the Christian heart is charitable, less self-centred and merciful, but this is not what I’m seeing.
I don’t care what your vaccination status is. Both sides passionately believe that their decision is the right one for their health. I do care how the 2 camps are treating one another, especially in the body of Christ. I can’t believe how 2 jabs make one camp feel superior, entitled and protective of their rights, and how the non-conformists are equally quick to demand their rights.
We have been told that “the human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jer. 17:9 NLT). We know these things yet we can allow a small change in our status to change our attitudes to one another. Sadly, we can revert to discrimination so easily.
If our hearts are lovesick for Jesus we will be set on fire, enraptured and overcome by His love and the events of these present days will not be a distraction. We need to dwell on the eternal Spirit that we studied in the Song of Solomon and be humbled before a Bridegroom who died for us to be set free. He was pierced for our transgressions (Isa. 53:5) and one day we will look on Him who was pierced (Zech. 12:10).
Think about these words of C.S.Lewis in 1940: “You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the “lord of terrible aspect,” is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.” (The Problem of Pain, p. 39).