May 26

Song of Solomon - Psalms 127; Song of Songs 1:1-17, 2:1-17, 3:1-11, 4:1-16, 5:1-16, 6:1-13, 7:1-13, 8:1-14


Soooooooooo. Does the editor of the Daily Bible pack the entire Song of Solomon into one day and a single reading in order to minimize the "excitement" generated by this most-unquoted book of the Bible? One wonders. But I think it's here for a reason. To say simply - romantic love, desire and sex aren't dirty. They are God given and God approved. Perhaps this book was slipped into the cannon just so even the most conservative of Christian can't ignore sex. Some try to explain away the book as an allegory, Christ and the church. Fine. Ok. But maybe sex is an allegory, too. And we experience it to know a bit of heaven, to know a bit of Christ's love for his church and us and to know God's love for us that he gave us something so good. Because it is good.


Actually, I grew up with a passage from the Song of Solomon quoted to me each spring of my adolescence. Kind of kinky, huh? It was a wonderful moment. Greatly anticipated and longed for each year. It never failed to arouse my passion for a wonderful, sensual pastime: baseball.

Each spring at the beginning of the baseball season, I'd tune the dial of my dented transistor radio toward Detroit to WJR and to Tiger baseball and announcer Ernie Harwell. And evey season of my childhood, Ernie would quote from the Song of Solomon before the first ball was thrown out. I didn't know anything about the book, just that it greeted the spring and the game I loved. Ernie was a wise and wonderful man, a religious man, but daring enough to quote from a book most chose to ignore.

I can still hear his voice tinged with just the slightest wisp of an Atlanta accent, reciting:

"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land...."
Song of Solomon 2:11-12, KJV

Ah, when baseball was all I knew of love and Ernie Harwell was all I knew of the Song of Solomon. It was a good time, an innocent time and I was more like Adam in the Garden then than I have ever been in my life. Lord knows.

Play Ball!