[He:] How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights! Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit. May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine.” (Song of Solomon 7:6–8)
DELIGHT IN THE BODY. In the first three chapters of the Song of Solomon the lovers pursue and long for each another, yet there is a repeated exhortation to self-control, to “not arouse or awaken love until it pleases” (2:7, 3:5). Finally comes the wedding in chapter 4. Now the man takes hold of his wife’s breasts in sexual embrace. No longer is he merely admiring them—now he will partake. “God invented our bodies and delights in them, and would have us do the same.”137 The Bible is subversive to both hedonism and asceticism. In it we see a bare-faced rejoicing in sexual beauty and pleasure—no prudishness here. And yet, as we have seen, the man and woman have waited on sex until their love has made them capable of whole-life investment in each other.
Reflection: Is there a celebratory note in your sexual relationship? Do you ever let your spouse feel that you rejoice in his or her body?
Prayer: Lord, protect me from either the semiworship of sex, as in pornography, or a discomfort with it entirely. Instead, in my marriage, show me how to delight in touch and physicality, as I love my spouse as you loved us. Amen.