As always happens, you’ll want to listen to this as I don’t stick to the following as a “script.” Just listen.
Blessings to your Sunday, my friends. Today would you join me in praryfully reflecting in a little different way? I want to share with you a short devotional from the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon and then I’ll conclude with a thought or three.
To set up the context, the verse he uses for this reflection is from Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon, depending on which Bible translation you use). Song is a book of passionate love, and most theologians (including me), see it as an image of God’s love for us. This verse, verse 16 in chapter 4, is in the middle of a him and her, a bride and groom going back and forth as they wax on romantically. This is her:
16 Awaken, north wind;
come, south wind.
Blow on my garden,
and spread the fragrance of its spices.
Let my love come to his garden
and eat its choicest fruits. [1]
Here’s Spurgeon:
Anything is better than the dead calm of indifference.
Our souls may wisely desire the north wind of trouble if that alone can be sanctified to the drawing forth of the perfume of our graces.
So long as it cannot be said, “The Lord was not in the wind,” we will not shrink from the most wintry blast that ever blew upon plants of grace.
Did not the spouse in this verse humbly submit herself to the reproofs of her Beloved; only entreating him to send forth his grace in some form, and making no stipulation as to the peculiar manner in which it should come? Did she not, like ourselves, become so utterly weary of deadness and unholy calm that she sighed for any visitation which would brace her to action?
Yet she desires the warm south wind of comfort, too, the smiles of divine love, the joy of the Redeemer’s presence; these are often mightily effectual to arouse our sluggish life. She desires either one or the other, or both; so that she may but be able to delight her Beloved with the spices of her garden. She cannot endure to be unprofitable, nor can we.
How cheering a thought that Jesus can find comfort in our poor feeble graces. Can it be? It seems far too good to be true.
Well may we court trial or even death itself if we shall thereby be aided to make glad Immanuel’s heart. O that our heart were crushed to atoms if only by such bruising our sweet Lord Jesus could be glorified. Graces unexercised are as sweet perfumes slumbering in the cups of the flowers: the wisdom of the great Husbandman overrules diverse and opposite causes to produce the one desired result, and makes both affliction and consolation draw forth the grateful odours of faith, love, patience, hope, resignation, joy, and the other fair flowers of the garden. May we know by sweet experience, what this means.[2]
This week I’ve had occasion to think about how God wants good things for us, and how He knows the desires of our hearts, and how He invites us to trust that He knows that.
But what’s the opposite of all that? Sure, sometimes it could be rebellion. But often it’s being too busy, too amused to death, too indifferent to the richness of His love.
The romantic, even erotic, imagery of this verse remind us that, being made in His image, we are wired to know and be known. And like when Shakespeare wrote ‘tis better to have loved and lost than to never known love at all, perhaps today we should be reminded that the one surefire way to be safe is to capitulate to not even trying.
Because anything is better than the dead calm of indifference.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
[1] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), So 4:16.
[2] C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).