Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
It’s like a gigantic earthquake so powerful that it changes the landscape everywhere: it’s a new direction in thinking in people who believe the Bible and who appreciate the love of Christ. What seems to be a new idea for multitudes.
To grasp it we need to go back to the pathetic story in the Song of Solomon 5:2ff.
The Lover (that is, the Bridegroom-to-be) has been on a safari and has returned to his beloved, to be with her. It is evening, and she has already gone to bed and is in that half-way state between awake and drifting off to sleep. It’s raining, according to the text, and the Lover is wet, cold, hungry, longing to be with her.
The Hebrew text says that He not only knocked on her door; He banged on it in His eagerness. (Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:20 are a direct quotation, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” but not from the Hebrew Masoretic text but from the Septuagint, ancient Greek translation.)
The girl (the Bride-to-be) hears him, but she is indifferent. She repulses Him; she has gone to all the trouble to get ready for bed, she does not want Him to disturb her. “I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet: how shall I defile them?” (In some developing areas of the world, people still live in mud houses with cow-dung floors; the last thing you do when you go to bed is to sit and wash your feet; then gathering them into bed you stay there until morning; no telling what is running around the floor at night.)
To her, too bad; her Bridegroom-to-be is a nuisance tonight. No opening the door for Him tonight.
What can He do but turn away sorrowfully, deeply pained to be so repulsed. He loves her; and she has in the past told Him she loves Him, but now she has gone back on that profession of acceptance; she no longer believes in Him, at least for now.
Why this sudden heart-rejection?
Finally, as she lies there, her conscience begins to prick her; she stops thinking only of her own selfish comfort snug in bed on a cold rainy night and she begins to think of Him out in the cold, alone, hungry; this paradigm shift in thinking and in feeling rouses her and she gets up belatedly to go and open the door for Him. But when she does, He has gone. Gone, for over a century.
Is this an inspired story of Jesus and His church which He “loves”? Could it be, that He is heart-broken with love?
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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