This morning we suggest reading the sixth chapter of Song of Songs to accompany Hudson’s commentary.
I was asleep, but my heart waked:
It is the voice of my beloved that
knocketh, saying,
Open to me, my sister, my love,
My dove, my undefiled
How often the position of the bridegroom is that of a knocking suitor outside, as in his epistle to the Laodicean church: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.’
It is sad that he should be outside a closed door—that he should need to knock; but still more sad that he should knock, and knock in vain at the door of any heart which has become his own. In this case it is not the position of the bride that is wrong; if it were, his word as before would be, ‘Arise, and come away’: whereas now his word is, ‘Open to me, my sister, my love.’ It was her condition of self-satisfaction and love of ease that closed the door.
– J. Hudson Taylor, Union and Communion: A commentary on the Song of Songs