Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind. Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. (Song of Solomon 4:16, ESV)
King Solomon’s love of Gardens makes me wonder why he did not invent golf long ago. Indeed, we love golf partly because we play in a Garden.
But before we consider Solomon and his Garden imagery, don’t forget that the King describes his beautiful Bride in this garden, which makes me smile. “Your hair is like a flock of goats… your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes… your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate… your neck is like the tower of David…” (Song of Solomon 4:1-4). I need a good cartoonist to help me imagine what this woman looks like.
Solomon goes on to remind us that a beautiful and fragrant garden is most impressive when the winds blow. “Awake, O north wind and come, O south wind. Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow.” (Song of Solomon 4:16)
Lettie Cowman expressed it more eloquently than I can 99 years ago in her devotional classic, Streams in the Desert, describing what happens when these challenging winds “blow upon my garden.”
Pause to imagine your life as a garden, and then listen as Lettie describes the scent of the spices in the garden. She says:
“Some of the spices mentioned in this chapter are quite suggestive.
The Aloe was a bitter spice, and it tells of the sweetness of bitter things, the bitter-sweet, which has its own fine application that only those can understand who have felt it.
The Myrrh was used to embalm the dead, and it tells of death to something. It is the sweetness which comes to the heart after it has died to its self-will and pride and sin. Oh, the inexpressible charm that hovers about some Christians simply because they bear upon the chastened countenance and mellow spirit the impress of the cross, the holy evidence of having died to something that was once proud and strong, but is now forever at the feet of Jesus. It is the heavenly charm of a broken spirit and a contrite heart, the music that springs from the minor key, the sweetness that comes from the touch of the frost upon the ripened fruit.
And then the Frankincense was a fragrance that came from the touch of the fire. It was the burning powder that rose in clouds of sweetness from the bosom of the flames. It tells of the heart whose sweetness has been called forth, perhaps by the flames of affliction, until the holy place of the soul is filled with clouds of praise and prayer.
Beloved, are we giving out the spices, the perfumes, the sweet odors of the heart? (Streams in the Desert, 1926, Devotional for September 15).
This is our role at the golf courses where we live and play. God has sent most of us great winds of difficulty that are hard to understand.
The aloe of bitterness.
The myrrh of death.
The frankincense of fire.
Lettie Cowman reminds us that we can have the “heavenly charm of a broken spirit and a contrite heart, the music that springs from the minor key, the sweetness that comes from the touch of the frost upon the ripened fruit.”
I met recently with a dear friend at our golf club. I did not truly know his story until he told me about his two sons who died from drug addiction. I could hear and feel his tears. It was the ‘sweet music that springs from the minor key.’
Prayer: Oh God, let the winds and the wounds of life blow across the can garden of our lives, and bring sweet odors of the heart which transform everyone we touch. Amen.