On Being Loved

There isn't a day of our lives when love doesn't matter. We are relational creatures. We flourish by love, giving and receiving it, by loving and being loved.

Many poets have woven words to express the exquisite gift of love. Among my favorites are  -
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways.
• William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116,
• Sara Teasdale's "The Kiss" and
• Rainer Maria Rilke's "Along the Sun-Drenched Roadside"

But for my beloved on this our sixth Valentine's Day here is a selection of lines from the Song of Songs -

The Scent of Water - Wells of Hope

In Job 14, the beleaguered wise man asks a lot of questions trying to solve the riddle of life and death.

Using a string of similes, Job ponders our human mortality – we’re like flowers that wither, fleeting shadows, day laborers (here today, gone tomorrow), lakes and rivers that evaporate, soil and stone eroded by running water.

But knotted into this string of death images is the intriguing thing called hope. Is it a mirage? Is it a false dream, a futile longing, that our lives have meaning and significance? Or does the world contain hints that point to a reality bigger than death?

A Garden Fountain

In recent posts we’ve been considering the significance of the Garden of Eden for human vocation and environmental stewardship.

Eden is also the Bible's original setting where a man and woman first set eyes on each other. So it is entirely fitting that the Song of Songs, which is full of extravagant poetic description, uses garden and water imagery to depict the intimacy and vibrancy of marital love.

Dear lover and friend,
you're a secret garden,
a private and pure fountain.
Body and soul, you are paradise, . . .
A garden fountain, sparkling and splashing,
fed by spring waters from the Lebanon mountains.
Song of Songs 4:12-15 MSG


In the exotic language of this song, this is an extended metaphor of sexual intimacy.

Three Things that Amaze – No, Make that Four!

Near the end of a book written to teach us wisdom, comes a portrait of four things that can leave you in awe. Proverbs 30:18-19 says,

There are three things that amaze me—

no, four things that I don’t understand:

how an eagle glides through the sky,

how a snake slithers on a rock,

how a ship navigates the ocean,

how a man loves a woman.

If You Had Only One Wish . . .

Kaitlin Boyda really knew how to live.  Here is an inspiring story from Compassion Canada

Kaitlin Boyda, who lived with a faith and compassion that inspired hundreds of people to give to water projects through Compassion Canada, passed away on Thursday last week, May 5, 2011 at the age of 17.

Kaitlin, from Lethbridge, Alberta, was diagnosed in the summer of 2009 with a cancerous brain tumour at age 16 and has spent the last year and a half battling its affects. When she was approached by the Children’s Wish Foundation in December 2010, she decided not to choose a wish to benefit herself, but to donate the wish to build a well for children in need in Uganda.

The Roar of a Waterfall

There’s a distinct sound reverberating across Canada today. It's Election Day.

After weeks of political speeches, debates, promises and threats, millions of voters are going to get the last word. It’s called democracy – a flawed system to be sure, but better than most other ways of governing in our world.

In the days of imperial Rome, John, the last-surviving disciple of Jesus, was a political prisoner. The emperor and his regime feared the truth about Jesus and tried to silence John’s witness by exiling him to their version of Alcatraz or Robben Island, the Aegean island prison of Patmos.

A voice like a trumpet shattered John’s solitary reverie one day. Whirling around to see who was speaking, John was stunned speechless by a vision of Christ and by the sound of his voice – which thundered like ocean waves or the roar of a cataract.

Royal Wedding

In honor of the wedding today of William and Kate in Westminister Abbey, I’m re-posting some thoughts from October 17 on the ancient words from the Song of Solomon about water and love:

Many waters cannot quench love;

Nor can rivers drown it.

Song of Solomon, 8:6-7

The minister told the royal couple in Westminister Abbey today - and millions watching on television - that every wedding is a witness to hope. But it is an island of hope in a very perilous sea.

Soaked and Soiled - the Joy of Serving

In first-century Palestine, it was courtesy to welcome guests to your home by washing their feet. Since most of the roads and laneways were unpaved, both in rainy seasons and dry, people’s feet would quickly be caked with dust or mud. Simple hospitality required a host to arrange for a servant to wash the feet of the guests when they arrived.

But as Jesus and his friends gathered to celebrate Passover, there were no servants to wait on them. And every disciple was jockeying for the right to sit closer to Jesus, acutely focused on his prestige in the group. No one moved to initiate this basic gesture of hospitality.

Radical Equality

Here’s a wonder of water – sunrise and rainfall support democracy!

Your Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:45

Jesus says that God is a large-hearted, even-handed Giver. He points out that God is generous to us regardless of our degree of virtue or vice. Sunshine and rain are gifts from the Creator to his creatures with no moral pre-conditions. Jesus echoed the Psalmist a thousand years earlier who said “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all that he has made.” Psalm 145:9.

Fountain of Life

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is home to more geysers than any other place in the world. Half of the world’s 1000 known geysers are here.

Geysers occur only in particular hydro-geological conditions, usually near active volcanic zones, where surface water works its way down to a depth of around 2,000 meters where it meets up with hot rocks. The resultant boiling of the pressurized water produces the geyser effect.

Every 90 minutes or so, Yellowstone’s most famous geyser, Old Faithful, serves up a fountain of 15,000 to 30,000 liters of boiling water and spews it 150 feet into the air - thunderous power and surprise, dramatic beauty and unfailing reliability.

The poet-king David never visited Old Faithful, but in Psalm 36 he wrote about his experience of God with equally dramatic nature imagery.