Reading from Monday, September 6

What up.

Reading for September 6
Song of Solomon 1:1-4:16
Oh yeah. The sexiest book of the Bible. I know nothing about it other than it's about sex. Let's see what she holds.

OK - not quite as much about sex as I thought, but it is about the love between a man and a woman. It's a nice change of pace from the two utter downers of Job and Ecclesiastes. We were just told that everything is meaningless for twelve chapters, but now in Song of Solomon, we see how meaningful earthly love can be. There is also no mention of God at all, yet. What I think this means is that this writing should be viewed as a blueprint, or ideal, for how love should take place between two people.

Equally adamant about their love for one another. Equally giving and taking. Equal in everything.

And while this does feel a little "young romancey" in that they are so infatuated with one another, it conveys a real human-to-human emotion: love. With the first 2/3 of the Old Testament being so heavy with theology and rules and laws and punishment, it is so beautiful to see something so distinctly human and so recognizable to the readers.

There really aren't many verses that stand out as theological knock outs, but this last verse is pretty provocative:

¹⁶ Awake, north wind,
       and come, south wind!
       Blow on my garden,
       that its fragrance may spread abroad.
       Let my lover come into his garden
       and taste its choice fruits.

Daaaaaaaaamnn...

2 Corinthians 8:16-24
Again, Paul is talking to a very specific group of people. Not super interesting.

Skip.

Psalm 50:1-23 
This psalm goes into a little of what God says to his people. He first says that even though "you" (Jews) continually make sacrifices to him, he does not need any of it. Every animal on earth is already his anyway. This forward transposes to the idea of prayer. My question has always been, "if God knows everything, or if there is already a plan, what's the sense in praying if it's already planned out." Well I have two answers for that:

1) Praying refines the heart. It is in prayer and meditation that you open yourself up to the will of God and will hopefully see what his plans indeed are.
2) There is a scene in "The Magician's Nephew" where Aslan sends a boy on a mission that takes a couple of days. The first night, the boy realizes that he doesn't have any food for dinner. He asks his talking horse, why Aslan wouldn't have thought to give him any food, and the horse replies "I'm sure he would have given you anything you wanted, but I have a feeling he just likes being asked."

Proverbs 22:22-23
 ²² Do not exploit the poor because they are poor
       and do not crush the needy in court,
 ²³ for the LORD will take up their case
       and will plunder those who plunder them.

Excellent.