My Song of Solomon Post

I enjoy gardening. I guess even though a boy becomes a man, he still enjoys playing in the dirt. There is something special about working the earth God created and being part of the creative process. Granted, when God created the earth and all that is on it, He started with NOTHING, but we join the creative process and take seeds from what has been created before, plant them, nurture them, tend them, then harvest and eat the results.

Since we have moved to Hoschton, I haven’t had a garden. Wouldn’t do any good here. If I planted a garden, it would feed the local “wild kingdom” before it fed anyone else. We see an abundance of deer, quite a few rabbits, some raccoons, ‘possum, and the occasional fox. The fox sightings always remind me of Scripture passage:

Catch the foxes for us —
the little foxes that ruin the vineyards—
for our vineyards are in bloom.
Song of Solomon 2:15

In this part of the love story between Solomon and the Shunnamite woman, she using this beautiful poetic expression to remind her lover to guard against relational predators that would sabotage their love and strain their relationship. She wanted to guard against actions and attitudes that would cause their love for each other to grow cold.

In the same manner, for all of us we are in danger of spiritual foxes eating the blooms of our relationship with Christ before fruit appears on the vine. We often allow the our spiritual discipline to grow stale and lifeless due to routine and familiarity.

When we do the same things over and over, they become second nature to us. If we always read the same passages of Scripture, pray the same prayers, read the same devotionals, we may become so familiar with them that they lose their freshness. Let me suggest that you “freshen” things up from time to time.

Read a different Bible translation for a whole week - seeing the truth stated a little differently adds a new perspective.

Read the Bible out loud. Reading aloud causes you to think about each individual word and its meaning.

Try writing out your prayers. Again, writing them forces you to think about what you want to say – to bring prayer back into the conscious chamber of your brain. Rote prayers can be uttered without a second thought. Written prayers require fresh focus.

Instead of singing the words to a hymn, try reading it instead. Taking away the need to notice the melody allows more focus on the meaning of the words. So many hymns were first written as poems only to later have music added to them. You could be amazed at the praise and truth that stems from the message of even the most familiar hymns when we employ them a little differently.

Consider a one meal a day fast for several days. When you deprive the body you often get the soul’s attention. Taking ourselves out of the regular flow of daily activity awakens our minds and hearts to hear what God may want to speak through His Word and our prayers.

What foxes threaten your vineyard? What are you doing about it? In the words of Dora the Explorer . . . SWIPER, NO SWIPING!!!!