Uncomfortable

***This post is not suitable, in my opinion, for young unmarried persons.***

***Also this is a Spoiler Alert for One Thousand Gifts***

Reading Ann's last chapter was uncomfortable.

"It's our making love."

"To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin."

"The intercourse of soul with God is the very climax of joy."

Even Ann admits, "I feel this burn too, flush of embarrassment up the face."

Her writing here is very... ahem...sexual. Maybe it is the way I am reading it. I am conflicted.

I believe the picture of a marriage is not referencing God and a single believer, as it seems Ann is inferring here. Rather, it is referencing Christ and his Church. Yes, there is still an intensity and intimacy, but somehow it is one degree removed. There is less tension. I wonder how a man would read this chapter?

I would like to read Spurgeon's rendering of Song of Solomon. I know Matthew Henry interprets the book from an allegorical perspective. Is there crossover? Can it be about both human, sexual love and a love between Christ and a believer? I wonder what Ann thinks of it?

I know we, even in our current morality-free, anti- "absolute truth" culture, still hold vestiges of the "Victorian Prudishness." Is that the akwardness I am feeling? After all, Abram bedded Sarai's servant. David was a barbaric king who had multiple wives, who also danced exposed in public. Charlemagne was a great Christian king of the Middle Ages and his principal wife was only 13 when he married her and he too had concubines.

Is it simply a cultural norm that Ann insults in her last chapter, or has she unintentionally crossed a line because of an error in a theological analogy?

I don't know.

I know I am challenged to " live in God."

I know I want to be in closer communion with God as a result of reading this chapter.

I know I wouldn't want an unmmarried child of mine reading that chapter.

I know I won't recommend this last chapter to a few choice friends.

I JUST DON'T KNOW.

Is this a call not to throw out the baby with the bathwater?

God has used this book in my life. He has revived me, quickened my spirit, restored the joy of my salvation. And this book was a pathway, a gate, a means to that grace.

I have searched my Bible more, prayed more, seen more of God in this season that I have in the last couple of years -the dormant years.

I am still conflicted, but also, I am refreshed.

I'll keep the baby.

I have more time to figure out what's the bathwater.