Spending Time with God When it's Inconvenient

Song of Solomon 5:2-6
I sleep, but my heart is awake;
It is the voice of my beloved!
He knocks, saying,
“Open for me, my sister, my love,
My dove, my perfect one;
For my head is covered with dew,
My locks with the drops of the night.”
I have taken off my robe;
How can I put it on again?
I have washed my feet;
How can I defile them?
My beloved put his hand
By the latch of the door,
And my heart yearned for him.
I arose to open for my beloved,
And my hands dripped with myrrh,
My fingers with liquid myrrh,
On the handles of the lock.
I opened for my beloved,
But my beloved had turned away and was gone.
My heart leaped up when he spoke.
I sought him, but I could not find him;
I called him, but he gave me no answer.

So besides being a great love story, what does this passage mean? Let's review it, first.

So her 'beloved' (aka God) knocks at her door and asks to come in. Her first response is 'but I'm already in my pjs, and showered!' (okay, paraphrased and in modern-day terms). But then God puts His hand on the doorknob, and she realizes that she does want to let Him in. Her hands are dripping with 'aromatic resin', but when she opened the door, He was gone.

Later on in the story, she goes searching through the city to find Him, and finds Him, but we'll have to look at that later.

So, she really didn't feel like answering the door. It wasn't easy or convenient for her to hang out with Him. But then she realized that she wanted to see Him, but by the time she was ready, He was gone.

If she had just jumped up when He first called her, she wouldn't have had to go searching for Him. But this is a mistake we all make. The day after I read this, I was sitting in bed not wanting to pray, because I didn't feel like it. This verse came to mind: it wasn't convenient at that moment to pray and talk to God, but I had to do it (mostly because God says to pray, but partly because I can't sleep if I don't pray first). Every morning, when I read the devotional email I get, I argue whether just to skim or to read it all.

Worshipping and praising God when it's inconvenient is just as important as when it's convenient.

Response Question (in the comments section):
a. Where did YOU see Jesus in the Bible passage today?
b. Did this story remind you of a time when you really didn't feel like praying, or reading the Bible, or whatever?

In His Service,
Joyce