Aspects of God’s love for us and growing in our love for Him

A journey through the love poetry of Song of Songs

 

Introduction

This Bible-reading series is a first in the Mariners collection.  It’s a deep-dive into the love of God, to discover more about how He loves us.  At the same time the series will open our eyes to the truth that our experience of God’s love makes our own heart grow to love God in the same kind of ways that He loves us.

 

There are lots of places in the Bible where we learn about God’s love.  In some ways the whole Bible is a love story between God and the human race.  But I have chosen a very special book in the Bible for this series, which is going to be our learning place.  It’s a book that is very rarely taught in church services.  So, it’s possible you may never have heard a talk about this book.  Perhaps you have only read very selective parts of it; or maybe not at all.

 

Before I offer a brief introduction to the biblical book we’re going to study, let me introduce you to an author from 500 years ago whose writings are the inspiration behind this series.

 

St John of the Cross was a Spanish monk, born in 1542.  He was a writer and some of his books are still treasured today, because he wrote with great honesty about how we live in relationship with God.  His most famous book is called “The Dark Night of the Soul” and it’s about understanding our difficult experiences in life when God can feel far away.

 

But as part of that wider book, St John of the Cross writes about the importance of us growing in our love for God.  He uses the idea of a ladder.  As we grow step by step in our love for God, it’s as if we ascend to being closer and closer to God.  So, he uses the phrase, “Ladder of Love,” suggesting there are 10 steps on the ladder.  In other words, 10 different ways that we can show love to God.  And he saw each step as building on the ones before. 

 

The idea of growing in our love for God is a good one, but a ladder makes it look like a journey of love is always in a straight line, and I think our experience of love is different to that.  Far from being neat and linear, a journey of love can have many up and down moments, as well as times when we circle back to similar experiences we have had before.  So I’m not sure if the dimensions of love that form St John’s steps on his Ladder of Love are experienced by us in a strictly ascending order.  But I do think the aspects of love he identifies are beautiful and take us into the heart of God for us.

 

The Bible says that we only love God because He has first loved us (1 John 4:19).  So, growing in our love for God always depends on the way we are growing in our understanding and experience of God’s love for us.

 

St John of the Cross based his wisdom on growing in God’s love on a book in the Old Testament called Song of Songs.  It’s a love poem, originally written in Hebrew, where a man and a woman in love, write to each other and about their experience of love. 

 

The first line of the book is like its title and it says:

“This is Solomon’s song of songs, more wonderful than any other.”

Song of Songs 1:1

 

That’s quite a good translation of the Hebrew, which can be understood in two ways.  In Hebrew, if you want to say something is special, you repeat the word.  So, if something is extra holy, in Hebrew you would say it is holy holy.  That’s why, when the Temple was built in Jerusalem, the room at the centre, where the presence of God was supposed to dwell, was called the holy of holies.  That just means the most holy place.

 

So, the term “Song of songs” in Hebrew can mean the most wonderful of songs.  And some Bibles translate the first verse in that way.  But it could more simply mean that the book is a song that is made up of many songs: a song of songs.

 

And the title links the book with Solomon, one of the kings of Israel, but it’s unlikely this means he was the author.  Solomon is probably linked with the book because the Bible tells us he wrote poetry and songs (1 Kings 4:32).  And sometimes this Bible book is called the Song of Solomon.

 

One reason for its inclusion in the Bible is the way the poetry has been interpreted as helping us to understand the relationship of love between God and us.  In the poetry, the man is seen as representing God and the woman is seen as representing us.  In the Song of Songs book, we see God, through the character of the man, demonstrate all 10 dimensions of love which St John of the Cross writes about.  And we see through the poetry of the woman how she responds towards the man with the same 10 dimensions of love.

 

So, in this series, we’re going to explore these 10 dimensions of love.  Because we are taking a thematic approach, we’re not going to be reading Song of Songs from start to finish like a normal book.  We’re going to listen to different parts of the book each time, in order to see the themes of love which are contained in the book’s poetry.  But by the end of series, we will have read the book in its entirety.

 

In this series, we’ll be drawing on the writings of St John of the Cross because his wisdom is important for how we learn to grow in our own love for God. We’ll learn what we writes about each step on his Ladder of Love.

And because Jesus shows us the love of God so perfectly, we’re also going to look at His life, to see how all 10 dimensions of God’s love are displayed in Him.

 

During this series I’ll be sharing practices from my own personal experience that I have found helpful to grow in my love for God. I especially want to commend the practice of contemplative prayer.  Sometimes this kind of prayer is described as, “Me looking at God who is looking at me with love.”  This form of prayer is particularly suitable for growing in our everyday appreciation of God’s love for us.

 

So, this series is a first for the Mariners collection because it is a fusion of three sources: Song of Songs, the life of Jesus and the writings of St John of the Cross.  The format of the series is that we will spend 3 days looking at each step on St John’s “Ladder of Love”.  On the first day we will look at God’s love for us.  On the second day we will look at how that aspect of God’s love is seen through Jesus.  And on the third day we will look at how we can grow in this aspect of our own love for God.  The final step will have a single day format as St John treats this step in a different way to the others.  For each day there will be a Bible reading, then some notes for our learning and reflection, and finally a prayer related to the theme of the day.

 

God wants to take us on a journey deeper into His love for us.  He wants to shower His love upon us.  And it’s the kind of love that makes us want to love Him in return.

 

I really hope you’re going to enjoy the beauty of the love poetry of Song of Songs.  And that through it you catch a clearer vision of God’s love for you in such a way that you grow in your own love for God.  It’s been a privilege to write this series and I hope it will be a rich learning experience for you.