Love is so great that it can only be described by what it is like. So does the Beloved stretch his imagination to the wide expanses of nature itself to describe the beauty of the Shulamite woman.

The best of wine—think of this image in recalling the reading from Ezekiel yesterday. The only exception is that here it is a source of joy in love, in place of the pain of unfaithfulness. Jesus at the marriage feast at Cana kept the best wine until now.

Connect chapter 8 verse 6 with the rest of the phrase that completes it. God is a jealous God, commanding that you find no other taking the place of God. If you are married, may you find your spouse in the Spouse.

Song of Songs 7—8

What are Bible Breaths? Learn More…
Example: Set as a seal on Your heart v. 6

Tuesdays are dedicated to the Old Testament books of history
and the Hebrew “Writings.”
In the season of Easter this year we read Proverbs 11—12 and The Song of Songs.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information

Vine-wood has only one purpose—to give grapes. Jesus shares the same image in John 15: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

Sense in your spirit the pain of the Lord as that of a husband of a wife who has become the most debased of whores that ever existed. The pain of God yields not “grapes of wrath,” but grapes of love—wine for Eucharist. Our blood lives because Jesus’s was poured out for us. Greater is the redemptive blood of Jesus than all our infidelity. The tenderness of God is described with all the exuberance of the Song of Songs.

However unfaithful you have been to the call of the Lord upon your life, be less in awe about this, than in awe about the constancy of God’s love for you. Greater is God’s love than your sin. Engraft yourself on the vine again—the only way your life will bear fruit.

Ezekiel 15—16

Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.
In the season of Easter we read Ezekiel 1—16.

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example: Faithfulness to You, O Lord 16:15ff

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

The final scene in Luke’s Gospel is described again in the opening chapter of the Book of Acts. It is the Ascension of Jesus. Before Jesus departs, he does for the disciples what he did for the two on the road to Emmaus—he opens minds to understanding.

Luke’s Gospel begins and ends in the Temple. The closed, empty, inner Holy of Holies of waiting, longing, and finally God’s intervention in Gabriel, contrasts with the whole Temple. The veil of separation is torn; the new community expands the sacred space of God’s presence as they wait for the Holy Spirit. This Spirit will take them beyond the boundaries of the old Temple to endless limits of the new temple of Christ’s body.

Spend these days of waiting, in watching, longing, and hoping for what is yet to come.

Luke 24:44–53

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example: Staying here till clothed with pow’r v. 49

Sundays are dedicated to the Gospels from the Revised Common Lectionary.
During Lent and Easter, we generally read from the Gospel of John.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.