Sick With Love (Songs 5:8)

 


Friday, January 10, 2025


Psalm 25

Songs 5:2-9

John 5:30-47


Observance: William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, martyr (d. 1645)


Sick With Love (Songs 5:8)


In the first part of this love story we rode the dizzying waves of fresh love. The man and the woman discovered each other, and professed their undying love. They kept themselves pure until the marriage bed, and passions were at bursting point. Then there was the big day, and in the verse just before where picked up again today is the blessing for the guests at the wedding feast: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!”


But no sooner have our lovers moved in together do the “little foxes” of chapter two then threaten this blossoming vineyard.


The phrase “lover’s tiff” doesn’t come close to doing justice to the emotions we experience in this type of situation. To disappoint the one we love most, even by accident or through circumstances outside our control, is a heart-ache like nothing else. “I adjure you, I charge you, most solemnly and with all urgency – find my beloved, whom I have hurt, and tell them that I am desperate to be reunited. I am sick with love for them.”


When we do the same to him who our Father called “my Son, the Beloved” (Matthew 3:17), we can measure our love for him by our heart’s response. Do we mourn over our sins? Do we yearn to be reunited with and restored in our love for Jesus? And we will we listen to the wise words of the Chorus in verse nine, to recall what makes him so much more than any other beloved?


Jesus, beloved Son of the Father and beloved of my soul: help me always to bring to mind what makes you more than any other, and forgive me when I let you down.

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