He Gave No Answer

Song of Solmon 5: 6
"I opened to my beloved
but my beloved had turned and gone.
My soul failed me when he spoke.
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.

I realize we as people always long for love, yet we also fear it. It's rare to have one without the other because they tend to come together with the package. To many of us, love has taken on various meanings, often times defined by the media, our parents and peers, and our own conjured up delusional ideas of what we believe real love is supposed to look like. We long for that fuzzy feeling side, that person or even thing that can keep us company at night, someone to celebrate holidays with, and someone that we can pour out our own love to so that we can feel significant. But at the same time, love is scary for most people. It means commitment through the thick and thin until the very end, it means trusting what you don't know, it means being vulnerable, it means death to self for another, it means forgiveness when you are wronged, it means to cover against all offense, it means to hold nothing back.

Like this bride in the song of solomon, one of the greatest fears a person has is losing the love of his/her life. After the beloved disappears, we see this intense journey that the bride goes on, and it's not a very colorful feel-good one. She gets beat up, bruised, and her identity is just exposed to be shamed. We see her desperation as she proclaims that she is "sick with love" as she convinces the public that her beloved is worth the journey to find -- this is usually the part where people's love is really tested. It's no longer about the fuzzy feeling inside or the the fun times, but it's about covering all the lies that people will say to you about your lover, it's about the journey you are willing to take to seek Him, it's about laying down all the facades and false images you've wanted to uphold for the sake of safety, it's about facing and overcoming all your fears.

When this passage says "he gave no answer", it gives me the chills. Doesn't love mean that He or anyone else is always supposed to be there and do this and that? I can't even imagine what the bride was thinking when "he gave no answer". He must have abandoned her. He must have deceived her. He must have done all these outrageous things against her. But we see later, that this bride knew her beloved and knew him better than anyone around her. She seeks him because she knows his love for her and that he is worth her fight to love -- even at the cost of facing all of her fears -- of rejection, abandonment, getting beaten up, and death.

Why does God give no answer and keep silent at times throughout the Bible and in our own lives? A big example is the story of Job. Job went through A LOT of adversity and God was silent for most of it (God even invited Satan to be a part of it!). Yet, there was this hidden trust behind God's silence. God didn't have to say anything -- Job already knew Him. God had entrusted him to go on that difficult journey to know Him in intimacy even when circumstances were bad. And as a result, he proved his love and faithfulness and was drawn into a deeper intimacy with Him. I don't think God so much needs us to PROVE our love to him (he doesn't really need anything from us), but if anything, I think times of trial or even just times of His silence is an opportunity for us to really test the genuineness of our love for him -- to test whether we truly know Him. I think he gives that to us, not because he needs to know, but to reveal the depth of us and our love for Him to ourselves-- and in trust, to give us the opportunity to be one who searches Him -- to be one who has no fear in our love for Him.

1 John 4:13-19
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe that love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.