Evening, June 19
Go To Morning Reading
“My Beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until
the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be
thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.”
Song of Solomon 2:16, 17
Surely if there be a happy verse in the Bible it is this—“My Beloved is mine, and I am his.” So peaceful, so full of assurance, so overrunning with happiness
and contentment is it, that it might well have been written by the
same hand which penned the twenty-third Psalm. Yet though the prospect
is exceeding fair and lovely—earth cannot show its superior—it is not entirely a sunlit landscape. There is a cloud in the sky
which casts a shadow over the scene. Listen, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.”
There is a word, too, about the “mountains of Bether,” or, “the mountains of division,” and to our love, anything like division is bitterness. Beloved, this
may be your present state of mind; you do not doubt your salvation;
you know that Christ is yours, but you are not feasting with him.
You understand your vital interest in him, so that you have no shadow
of a doubt of your being his, and of his being yours, but still his
left hand is not under your head, nor doth his right hand embrace
you. A shade of sadness is cast over your heart, perhaps by affliction,
certainly by the temporary absence of your Lord, so even while exclaiming,
“I am his,” you are forced to take to your knees, and to pray, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved.”
“Where is he?” asks the soul. And the answer comes, “He feedeth among the lilies.” If we would find Christ, we must get into communion with his people,
we must come to the ordinances with his saints. Oh, for an evening
glimpse of him! Oh, to sup with him tonight!