just finished my fourth and last session on the Song of Songs in KL Wesley Methodist Church evening services. Shared on the last 2 chapters, chapters 7 and 8. It was an interesting and enriching experience because to share the whole book means i have to first work through the book myself. this forces one to go through every verse as well as to clear some assumptions about the book. it means i have to work out first for myself what is my own position about the book e.g. authorship, dating, structure, themes etc.
the congregation totalled around 120 people yesterday and were appreciative of the effort to go through systematically a book which can be enigmatic for many people. many confessed that they did not really understand beforehand what they were reading especially as it is sometimes hard to decipher who is speaking in the different poems of the book.
i ended with picking up some key themes on love, marriage, the need to keep alive romance and passion in marriage and drawing parallels with our own relationship with God the Beloved. as an appropriate way to end the series, we sang the chours 'i keep falling in love with him'. the song appropriately summarizes our need not to lose our first love with God.
what's next? maybe i can get down to putting all my notes collected through the 4 weeks and edit them to make my next book entitled 'song of songs made simple' in my 'old testament made simple series'. but time is short and i got to work on my thesis next month with the hope of finishing everything by the end of the year. maybe, the book can wait a little more.
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