You Are the Lily

The Shulamite Bride:

"I am the rose of Sharon,

and the lily of the valleys."

The Beloved Bridegroom:

"Like a lily among thorns,

so is my love among the daughters."

Song of Solomon 2:1-2, NKJV

I wonder how many of you remember the old church song that goes:  He's the Lily of the Valley...  It's a beautiful song, a beautiful sentiment.  But it's also an erroneous eponym.  Jesus is not the lily of the valley; you are.

It's in the Bible, right there in black and white, in that little book of poetry that hardly anyone admits reading.  Teenagers often stumble across its rather startling descriptors and think, "Whoa!  I didn't know THIS was in the Bible!"  Many prudes have glanced over it with a hot blush in their lifeless cheeks and thought, "Well!  This doesn't belong in the Bible!"  My dad was well known for marking up his Bibles, sometimes to the point of making the pages almost unreadable.  But when I look at that old Bible, I often laugh at the fact that there is not even a smudge on the pages that contain the great Song of Songs, which is Solomon's.  I asked him about it one time, and his reply was, "First of all, I don't understand that book.  And second of all, it embarrasses me to read those words out loud.  So I avoid it."  That was the only explanation I got from a man who was afraid of nothing!

One summer I heard a new song sung at youth camp.  I listened to the words, felt the nudge of the Spirit, and opened my Bible to those stirring verses.  As I began to read through the Song of Solomon for the umpteenth time, comprehension finally dawned on me.  I was a grown man, having completed twenty-eight full circuits of the sun.  And only then did I really gain an understanding of that long love song.  It was a drama, sometimes a romantic comedy, being played out on the Bible in eight scenes.  It took the bride from memories of her summer fling with Solomon through her courtship and pre-wedding jitters to her wedding night, subsequent nights and mornings and afternoons filled with love, and finally her triumphant return to her hometown on the arm of her king.

And some of the funniest phrases found in Scripture are right there, in that first conversation between the king and his shy country bride.

One night while she's sitting around having a pajama party with her girlfriends, there comes a knock at the door, and it's Solomon come to have a look at his fiancee.  There's a flurry of activity; she's not ready.  Moments before she was enthralling her bridesmaids with details about his kisses, and how much she wants him to come and take her away with him.  And now with him right outside the door, she's saying, "Don't let him see me!  Don't let him see me!"

But Solomon comes in anyway.  The Shulamite hastily throws a towel over her messed up hair and wraps it across her face, then bows to him and says, "I'm still sunburned from my days in the field, when my family mistreated me.  My skin is dark and leathery because I've not had alot of time to take care of myself.  I wish you wouldn't look at me."

Solomon laughs as they flirt back and forth, and finally he says, "Come on, let me see you.  It can't be that bad."  And slowly she uncovers her face.  Solomon flashes her a charming grin and utters the pick-up line that is priceless among all others.  "Well, baby, you look better than my horse!"

You go read it!  And read it with your imagination turned on.  What woman in her right mind would like it if her boyfriend said to her, "I have compared you to my filly among Pharaoh's chariots"?  I've seen alot of ponies, and I've seen alot of girls, and I've got to tell you, I don't find horse-faced, bug-eyed, big-nosed, buck-toothed women that attractive.  I've even heard great preachers try to turn this verse into a wonderful compliment as well as a profound sermon, but it just doesn't work for me.  I'm a simple man and I see things in simple ways.  Solomon was having a little fun at the expense of his self-conscious fiancee.  Then he tops it with, "I like the necklace I gave you.  It looks good on you."

Then there's this whole back-and-forth about a banquet, and the bride's perfume, and some up-close and personal eye-gazing.  And the Shulamite Bride says to her Beloved, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." 

Now in case you haven't noticed any of the symbolism yet, let me fill you in.  In a Spiritual sense, we are the bride, and Jesus Christ our groom.  When he found us we weren't much, and then he brought us into his home and into his family by his own choosing, not ours, and he began the preparations of making us into the bride he will one day marry.  And for our part, we spend much of our time building ourselves up in his eyes, or putting ourselves down.  That lovely bride was trying to do the latter.  The rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley are two wildflowers common to Israel.  You can find them anywhere.  That bride is saying to her husband, "I know I'm just one more wildflower among all the common wildflowers.."  And there he interrupts her.

"No, my love, there is nothing common about you.  You are a lily among thorns; that's how I see you in comparison to other women.  And you are mine!"

Wow!