There are so many stunning lines of passionate love poetry in the Song of Solomon that a study of this book can bring with it an overwhelming of the senses. When I read it, I’m carried away to a place that makes the Lord’s love for me so singular and so personal that I have to absorb it in small pieces like something so rich, and with such intensity of affection, that I don’t want to miss a line without lingering. It is laden with the fragrance of romance; it describes the first-love wonder of the Lover for his Beloved; it tells of a first-love that is and remains--love.

There is nothing whimsical in the declaration. The promises are taken to the extreme lengths of surety. We can build our confidence on this fervency that nothing in the world delineates with such assurance, as evidenced by one of the phrases engrained upon beloved hearts that know of our Lover’s faithfulness:

“ Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned” (Song of Solomon 8:7, NIV Translation).

An elegantly beautiful house is situated right on the cliff above the Pacific’s song-filled waves in my picture. All of the wealth that stands before, and behind, and around it could be written as a check for the purchase of love, and it would be a document of derision. In a world where the use of the term “love” can be so cheapened by its transient and disposable aftermaths, this kind of a true valuation of love’s worth buoys the heart to stand richly covered in its treasures, that can only come from its Creator, the One who said in His Word: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10, NIV). In all conditions, we cannot ever out-love God. When we are as far away from Him as is possible, He loves us with a note that no one else can sign, written in the most precious substance in the universe--the blood of His Son.

We know of the allure of visiting many waters--that our thirst can be slaked by the abundance available to us. We know of rivers too wild to be traveled. But as well as the Lord’s love is beyond valuation, it is also mighty to stay, at all times. It doesn’t get its fill and move on as the wrongly named loves around us have with their Hollywood plots of brevity. It can ride wild rivers to accompany the Beloved, and never leave due to a severity of circumstance. It abides even in life’s floods, and it completes the restructuring of our heart’s place after the devastation, because His presence is far more precious than any loss, or any number of losses, can be. His presence holds the losses in keeping to care for our wounds—seemingly too deep to be assuaged. He always wants to know us at the deepest places from which the water of life springs-up within us--it is always fresh to Him. We are endlessly worth the pursuit. And we also, find Him everywhere in our most elated peaks of joy and in our lowest and most terrible sorrows.

He keeps saying that we are beyond price to Him. Look to the palaces of the world; marvel over their opulence, and it is all an empty shell compared to the value of the love that the Lord bears for us. Try to fathom the worth of the deed that He carries to buy us back to His ample bosom of love, and numbers will fail in a formula. Look to many waters; watch the thundering rivers, and see that the One who Loves our souls has the voice of might that out-roars all of them in His shout to come for us, to rescue us, and to keep us as His Beloved far beyond any tally that could set a price on His own--the Beloved of the Lord.

Praise dances abound to the blessed choreography of the sea spray of the many waters of the Lord’s incalculable love-song for us!