Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.
~ Song of Songs 8:6-7
The Song of Songs may be one of the best known books of the Bible but it is not necessarily one of the best understood. This book’s eight chapters are filled with love poems. The poems are tender, descriptive, and sensual. Some might even consider portions to be a tad bit racy. So what is this book doing in the Bible?
The phrase, The Song of Songs, is a Hebrew phrase similar to The Holy of Holies or The King of Kings. The Song of Songs is the Hebrew way of saying The Greatest Thing or The Greatest Song of All Songs. What does this book of love poetry have for us today? The Song of Songs introduces us to a young engaged couple who cannot wait to be together as husband and wife. The woman, who is called the beloved, delights in her man. The conversation in the book moves back and forth between the beloved and the man. There is a consistent theme of intense desire and a seeking and finding between the two.
The man and the woman resemble many young couples today. At the start of marriage there is usually a strong emotional and physical attraction. Most couples enjoy an intense, robust sex life. Over the years children, careers, the mortgage, and just the everyday sameness of life can threaten both the frequency of sex and the intensity of sexual desire. The seeking and finding shared in The Song of Songs gets interrupted and sometimes lost within the busyness of life.
What is this seeking and finding, and why is it so important? When we intentionally seek to know and be fully known by our mate, we find an emotional closeness ~ a deep and tender intimacy. This closeness mirrors the deep sense of belonging and love we have with our Savior.
So what can we do when the busyness of life creeps in and our seeking and finding gets lost in the shuffle? We can plan for daily couch time. This is a time where we intentionally sit down with our spouse and share about our day, our highs and lows, and all that is happening in our inner world. This is also a time of listening. We never want to use our couch time to vent our frustrations or criticisms of our spouse or our relationship. Research has shown that married couples need just ten minutes per day to really connect with one another. We can protect our couch time by putting all electronic devices away, turning the television off, and putting children to bed before we connect.
The beloved and the man in The Song of Songs knew an important secret to keeping love vibrant, interesting, and tender: connecting with loving, personal words leads to deep sexual desire. They intentionally pursued one another and instinctively recognized that deep emotional closeness is truly the greatest song of all.