The most common and popular word in our pop culture is ‘love’. It’s the subject of songs, books, films, poems, conversations, advertising – everything.The snag is that the English language has only one word for a hundred different things.We say we love our parents, love music, love football, love God and love fish and chips, and they are all very different things. But we only use the one word – love.
The Old Testament Hebrew language has so many words to fit many different situations. You can be fond of generally, keen on, dote on, cling to, yearn for, hunger for, be attracted to someone … The New Testament language is Greek, and there are a number of words for the different kinds of love we express. There is the word for friendship, or brotherly love – fondness, erotic feelings, parental kinship, as well as the greatest thing in the world: the love as defined by Paul in I Corinthians Chapter 13 which is not in it for what it can get, but is humble, self-less and self-giving. Love like the love of Jesus.
The Bible is all about love, but usually we think it doesn’t include passionate or sensual love, except to forbid it. Well the Song of Songs in the Old Testament is a celebration of sensual love. It’s a kind of drama in which the depths of human love are plumbed, and it is pretty sensual, unless you turn it into an allegory and make it mean what it was never intended to mean. The Jews have it right, when they see it as the material for celebrating a true marriage, a love match. This is from Chapter 4.
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love ;than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice! Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride. Song of Songs 4: 9-11

A Prayer:
Today Lord, we thank you for those couples we have known who loved each other so much that their relationship inspires all who knew them.

Now read Song of Songs Chapter 3.