Beloved

His left hand is under my head and His right arm embraces me... ~Song of Songs 2,6

This is my favourite verse from the entire bible :) I know it doesn't look like much.....but to me, it says like..everything. I want to talk to you about a topic that is mostly not talked about this way, brushed aside in most Christian settings because many feel uncomfortable talking about it and because it speaks about our most intimate desires. But I'm starting to find that it's like the most beautiful topic in the world... :)..and that there are no embarrassing desires.

I love this verse because it paints a picture of the relationship between God and me. It shows the way God wants me to see it - as a love relationship. I think the word love means nothing and means everything to us at the same time. We've heard it a zillion times, we're tired of it, it has lost its taste and its meaning. Although everyone and everything is talking about it and circling around it, we somehow think it doesn't work. Because we know TRUE love is unconditional, but we aren't unconditional..So where is the truth to it?

It's ironic to me how people say that the Bible is boring, at the same time listening to the radio, watching TV and thousands of movies, entering and breaking up relationships - all to get a portion and a little taste of love...Love songs, love movies, friendship, secrets and smiles - always and everywhere looking for love...and the Bible is called irrelevant. I have read big parts of it though and I can say - with my brain fully activated :D - that there is NO piece of literature, no movie, no Romeo and Juliet, no source ever or anywhere where you can find this purest, perfect and only worthy definition of love...It has been copied a million times in the craziest, pervert or beautiful versions, but the Bible is and will be the central message that reveals what love is - THAT's why I'd desperately recommend reading it. :) Love is not a concept or a deed...it is a person. GOD is the definition of love. The only logic consequence is that a relationship to him is a relationship to love. And that (already kind of unimaginable for my brain) would equal the most intimate and passionate, most consuming bond that there is.... I think it's important to see that this is what God wants. It's not our invention, our desire to be hugged, to be kissed and caressed and truly, deeply, over and over showered with affection. God himself is the reason for all that, his feelings, his desires....ours are pretty rudimentary compared to his, a shadow, a twisted little version of the first perfect picture...Longing for CLOSENESS is a feature that makes us a lot like him. Added up, all that means that we're allowed, actually we're supposed to see God as a LOVER. Not just the parenting love that covers us with blankets when we're cold or provides a plaster and a tissue when we're bleeding or crying...I mean romantic love.....and I'm not drifting away from the script here.. :) Read Song of Songs for example, you might actually blush and wonder WHAT? This is in the Bible?....Romance is not a human invention, nor an answer to or an outbreak of our uncontrollable drives....romantic love is not filthy...erotic love is completely connected to holiness, to perfectness.. :) It is not the animal in us, it is the very godliness inside us that longs for intimacy - intimacy that goes beyond just a hug...Basically, it all comes down to being a spark of God himself - and that's GOOD, otherwise we'd probably have to feel ashamed about some things... The reason this topic is often covered in shame and feelings of guilt is because the perfection of eros (erotic love in Greek) is - as everything on this earth - mixed with and damaged by our filth....There is a reason that our conscience rings all alarm bells sometimes. Set apart from God, eros in many aspects appears dark and shameful....and therefore is not satisfying. But in itself, it HAS its rightful place and is without question a perfect and beautiful part of creation. God loves unlimited passion :) but it drives him crazy to see us mock and destroy this beauty simply because we don't know how to receive and get the MOST from it... it's not him who wants to keep something from us, it's US who settle with less, taking one part out and devouring it, blind to see that we're robbing ourselves...

The entire message of the Bible is that God wants to be closer to us than any human can EVER be - that includes any situation, any relationship, any physical or emotional contact... Sadly, and fatally, it is often brushed aside that his love is fierce and fighting and jealous....And so after some time we get this picture that God may be an answer to our longing for peace, for comfort and some guidance, or maybe we'll go so far as to say he's a friend..... But when it gets to our REAL desires, our strongest longing - let's say especially in sexual terms, or in terms of real INTIMACY (which is not necessarily physical) - we think THIS is human stuff...and THAT is why we think God does NOT answer everything. But that would mean the Bible to a great extent is playing a nasty trick on us....telling us that God is saying "I can be EVERYTHING to you" but that he actually means EXCEPT for your deepest, profound needs and desires...go hide THEM somewhere else! - you filthy, lustful little human, you.... x)) No.. :) Not at all. If we take the Bible seriously, then apparently he knows about our deepest hopes and wishes and they matter to him, and his desire is to answer those desires.

Here's how his love is portrayed in the prophecy of Hosea:
When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me. So I will come upon them like a lion, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and tear open the locks of their hearts...

..sounds like a lot of emotions to me. You may think woaah..that is VIOLENT. But see it this way...God isn't in ANY way obliged to care about us. He is so gigantic and perfect in himself that he doesn't in any way need us. Nor does he, sorry to say, need your love. Not an ounce of it. :) The fact that he ever reacted when Israel, his people, left him, that he has given us guidelines to live by, that he breaks in and turns things around is an act of INTENSE, totally undeserved attention. WHY is he even so interested in us, in what we do, in whether we hurt ourselves or not? Why does he care that he goes to all the trouble of correcting us? We usually think Why isn't God helping me? ....Well, why should he? Does it benefit him? - apparently when we're satisfied, we forget him (verse above)... Have you ever read the Bible with the thought in the back of your head that he's not naturally bound to us, that he doesn't HAVE to care if we do things wrong?...You know, the worst thing he could do to us  - and that's the biggest judgement - is turn away his face, stop caring and just let us live the way we want to....but that won't come until the very, very end. Instead, God uses STRENGTH, real effort to win our love.....His love is found in his fury, in his desperate attempts to show us how to live a way that won't keep destroying us. He is compared to a bear whose cubs have been taken away........The fervency in all his actions actually humiliate him - it makes him seem human. But he is not a Zeus that can't control his temper. God shows his temper, his feelings to show us his affection. :) It is an act of humbling himself when he interferes and lets us know that we're running into a disaster. Every bit of anger in him is love. And he is serious about it. When Israel turned away from him, he calls calls it adultery, worshipping idols is prostitution to him...these expressions show that God sees the relationship, the bond to a human being as something really, really serious. He wants to become one with every single human - that is the picture of marriage. God wants you as his partner. :) I think it's INCREDIBLE....and I don't believe it's selfish that God wants the first place in my heart...Thinking about it, it honours me so so strongly that God actually CARES whether I love something or someone as much him. :)) Jealousy - when in the right context - is an evidence of how much you actually matter to someone. "You shall not bow down to them [idols] or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God..." (Exodus 20,5)..But he is patient and he wrestles with my heart..until I begin to love him... His is the purest and highest affection I have met. :)

At the same time, a relationship to God is not at all easy....as every love relationship there are big challenges. It begins and ends at the fact that God is not human. :) ..Imagine being bonded - as in married - to a gigantic, fire-breathing dragon...a dragon that will protect you and fight for you to the last trail of smoke from its nostrils....so frightfully BIG and unfit for me, and yet terribly in love with me....A relationship would be totally challenging, but it is BEAUTIFUL. :))
 

Finally, I want to add that I am not talking about an imagination or illusion in my head of someone perfect who loves me and therefore makes me euphoric from time to time and helps me to see a point in life. I have never FELT God's kiss...or seen his face the way I have of humans...but I can compare what God gives me - the deep, tasteable way that he does - to what I receive from humans.. And I can say that GOD - no matter how much a human has won my heart - is a thousand times, a million times better.... :))) If God's love was an illusion, I'd be dying of thirst..because once in love with God, you'll start getting rid of your other sources of satisfaction...breathing God instead of oxygen. :) And his love is better than oxygen, better than life...

You, God, are my God, sincerely I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the holy place, seen your power and your glory. My lips will glorify you because your love is better than life. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. I will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand carries me.. ~Psalm 63, 1-8