[She]
[2] I slept, but my heart was awake.
A sound! My beloved is knocking.
"Open to me, my sister, my love,
my dove, my perfect one,
for my head is wet with dew,
my locks with the drops of the night."
[3] I had put off my garment;
how could I put it on?
I had bathed my feet;
how could I soil them?
[4] My beloved put his hand to the latch,
and my heart was thrilled within me.
[5] I arose to open to my beloved,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh,
on the handles of the bolt.
[6] I opened to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and gone.
My soul failed me when he spoke.
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
Song of Solomon 5:2-6, ESV.
Today we begin a long series on how to deal with conflict in romantic relationships. Solomon and his bride are of course married by this point, but the things they have to teach us about conflict in relationships applies to every level of romance, whether married, engaged, dating, or even just getting to know someone.
Most of the principles can be applied to any relationship, not just romantic ones, but that's where we'll focus since that's where Song of Solomon focuses.
The first a most basic observation from the passage above: couples who love each other will still sin against each other.
This can sometimes be a strange concept for single people to grasp, but it's unavoidable. When you put two sinful people together in the same house day after day, they will sin against each other, no matter how much they love each other.
In the case of Solomon and his bride, she does something stupid and lazy. (To be fair, men do an equal share of stupid and lazy things; I'm not picking on ladies, here).
Solomon comes back to their bedroom late at night, after a long night of tking care of things kings need to take care of. They're newlyweds, and he wants to be physically intimate with his new bride.
The problem is that his bride has already gone to bed. She's locked the door, bathed, and is already half asleep. When Solomon knocks to be let in, she grumbles in her half-asleep state and basically says, "I'm already in bed. I don't want to get up and let you in."
She makes a few lame excuses. She says she's bathed her feet and doesn't want to soil them by getting out of bed, but she's in the palace. The floor isn't that dirty. She also says that she doesn't want to get up because she's already naked and doesn't want to throw on a robe, which is a cruel excuse to say to her husband who eagerly desires to see her naked.
Solomon continues to try to get in the door. Keyholes were rather large back then, so he sticks his hand in and tries to jimmy the lock. That doesn't work, and his bride still hasn't gotten up and let him in.
So Solomon walks away, dejected. To him, it feels like rejection. All he wanted was a night of intimacy with the woman he loves, and she couldn't even get up and open the door for him.
But eventually, his wife wakes from her half-asleep stupor and starts to feel romantic. She goes to the door eager to see her husband, but she's too late. He's already gone. In her half-asleep state, what felt to her as a few moments was a lot longer to Solomon. By the time she felt ready to have a romantic moment, he was long gone.
So this whole conflicts boils down to a moment of selfishness on her part. She wasn't trying to be malicious; she was half-asleep and snug in bed. But her refusal to open to her husband hit him hard. She may not have thought she was rejecting him, but she certainly was, and he clearly felt it.
We'll talk a lot more about this in days to come, going into more detail and exploring how the couple deals with this sin.
But for now, let's focus on this one key point.
Recognize that when you're in a relationship, you will sin against the other person, and they will sin against you. It's unavoidable.
To be sure, you should do everything you can to avoid sinning against each other. Take some advice from Philippians 2:3-4: "in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."
In other words, there will be times when you don't feel like being nice, or doing something that your partner wants. Solomon's bride sure didn't feel like getting out of bed.
Yet it's in these moments that your love can shine through the clearest. When your partner sees you doing something for them when they know that you don't feel like, that's when they see that you truly do care about them. That's how you prove that you're not in this for selfish reasons, but for genuine love.
But in those moments when one of you does something stupid and the other is hurt, remember Jesus. God has already forgiven you for every moment of sin you have ever committed against Him, and you have sinned against God far more often and in far deeper ways than you will ever be able to sin against your romantic partner.
So because God has forgiven you of far worse, I urge you forgive each other, no matter what the offense.
If you try to punish each other for the sins committed against you, you'll end up with a battleground.
If you forgive each other and strive to consider the other as better than yourself, you'll end up with an oasis of love.
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