One night as I was sleeping, my heart awakened in a dream. I heard the voice of my Lover. He was knocking on my bedroom door. ‘open to me , my darling, my treasure, my lovely dove’ he said.
‘i have been out in the night. My head is soaked with dew, my hair with the wetness of the night”
But i said, ‘ I have taken off my robe, should i get dressed again? I have washed my feet, should i get them soiled?’ (Song of Solomon 5:2-3)
Our Lord comes to us seeking us out in our innermost parts. He is the Lover of our souls and His love for us is intense, inexplicable and incomparable to any love that we know or experience.Like any lover, the Lover of our Souls seeks a deep abiding, fulfilling and enriching intimacy with us, In deed it is the very reason He created us and continually pursues us with His relentless wooing of our hearts.
His desire is NOT that we may pray more, do more good, pursue mighty exploits in His name, or be more religious. His desire is solely that we may let him; right in to the deepest, darkest, unexplored chambers of our innermost beings. It is in that place, where we think, reason, feel, dream, and will ourselves into action that the Lord Jesus seeks to take His rightful place.
He comes to us in the quiet cover of darkness, (when we are most pre-disposed to the need for love) gently seeking us out just as we are. Our response to His impassioned plea, ‘open the door, let me in, my treasure, my darling,….’ is a cold, flat refusal.
We refuse him entry into our souls because we are vulnerable and exposed. The kind of intimacy suggested by such a passion demands a yielding to nakedness, the willingness to expose ourselves completely to our Lover’s scrutiny. The prospect of revealing oneself to such bare scrutiny is enough to make us flinch away from God’s passionate call to Love.
We flinch and hide away from such intimacy and vulnerability because we sometimes feel a false piety. “My feet are clean, why should i make them dirty again?’ We bandy our sanctified, and sanitized religious selves before The Lord and deny that there is anything else unclean about us by pleading clean feet, at the expense of revealing an unclean heart.
Our response may also be prompted by guilt and shame. “I have taken off my robe should I get dressed again?‘ Its ironic that one would refuse entry to their lover on the basis of nakedness. It suggests a hypocrisy that contravenes the very reason why lovers seek each other out in the night behind closed doors. Our sense of shame and unworthiness makes us hide our naked selves away from our Lover’s desirous gaze. We fear being measured up and found lacking. Fixated on this fear, we miss the truth that our Lover chooses us with all our glaring imperfections. Its his desire for us that compels Him to come to our door, seeking us out, and not our charms that claim his attention.
Why do we respond in such cold rejection to Love’s call? The simple answer is we do not know Love. We do not know how to love and be loved. We are well acquainted with lust, and masters of self-satisfaction but ignorant of LOVE. Evidence to this effect is seen in how close intimacy in our day to day relationships often leaves us feeling vulnerable, fearful or uneasy.
We feel vulnerable at how little control of anything we have in the face of love. Love by its very nature cannot be given, manipulated nor transacted to gain a favorable profit for oneself. It can only be given freely of one’s accord and at best, hope for some generous reciprocity from the subject of our affection.
Until we learn to trust Him who loves our souls that He would give his very life for us, we may never know true satisfaction and deep fulfillment that comes from giving in to LOVE’s call.