S. O. A. P.
Here’s Your 90 second AM Devotional!
S-cripture:
Song of Songs 1:5
Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon.
O-bservation:
Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines. It’s no wonder that at least one of them was black. Some have said this is the Queen of Sheba, mentioned in other places of the Old Testament. This seems unlikely, yet this woman here is real, and most believe she was from the North Arabian tribes and descendants of Ismael. She was black, by some translations, and most likely a country girl who had immigrated to Jerusalem. Living in the hot sun of that part of the world, her skin was darkened even more by work in the fields, but here in this love story, it’s quite obvious that “Black Is Beautiful.”
A-pplication:
No doubt there was an instant comparison of her skin to the local Jerusalem beauties. When the wisest king who ever lived, the author of three Old Testament books, married a beautiful black woman, maybe it’s time for many to reconsider their personal views on what is and is not ok concerning marriage among different ethnic peoples. A friend of mine once said, “If God did not want different races coming together in Holy Marriage, he would have made our bodies such so that they could not reproduce.” The challenge for Solomon in this passage was did she have to convert to his Jewish faith to marry him. Certainly, he had many foreign wives, and it would appear that they brought him down, and he did not lift them to the one true God. Yet, it is notable that such a beautiful book of the Bible concerning marriage intimacy is between the wise King of Israel and a comely (meaning beautiful) black woman. Truly “Black Is Beautiful.”
P-rayer:
Dear Jesus,
As I reread this story this AM, I was reminded that YOU are not racist or prejudiced in any way. I pray that what has been happening in this world of ours would, in time, turn people to YOU to repent and not to each other to disagree. Amen
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