Vineyard Days – In the Heart of the Night

There is a lot entailed in growing older and growing up, isn’t there? The story of our life is imprinted on the parchment of these bodies we inhabit. While, with eternity planted in our hearts, you and I were known by our heavenly Father since before Time and our days began. It is surely a mystery born in the heart of the Ancient of Days; with Holy Spirit’s promise to us in the heart of the night that,

“In that day (when Jesus arrives), I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God.”
I Corinthians 13:12b - The Voice

Significance on His Mind

The last week of 2022, I spent time refreshing myself in Vineyard Days and the perfect faithfulness of God’s timing. It has been nearly three years since we trekked with the Shulamite. In the handful of weeks between Christ’s Eden and the five-part unfolding of the dream about Christ’s Bride, both her and our natural and spiritual significance overlapped. The Shulamite of Solomon’s Song was a real person who lived in her vineyard days, known from eternity past by our mutually shared heavenly Father.

Many read the Song and miss the significance of the Shulamite’s life. She lived the Song, therein finding significance with and in her Beloved. It is how her spiritual journey and developmental responses provide the pattern of us living after her (male, female; single, married, never married; with children or childless): set apart for His call, His will, and His desires.

To those whose eyes are dim in the dark and insist on the desecrating cry of “insignificance”, I can confirm that life will bear the fruit of a self-fulfilling prophecy until Jesus arrives and knocks on our door with significance on His mind.

It is why I have come to love the Shulamite almost as much as I love the Lord Jesus Christ, Shepherd Lover / Bridegroom King. For it is in the acts of learning how to accept and respond to the Lord’s love that we are taught first how to love ourselves. Love your neighbor as yourself is subject to cultivated responsiveness to his Spirit of Grace within as we live and learn in our vineyard days. The farmer that labors is first partaker.¹

“I am the sprouting vine and you’re my branches. 
As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—
but when you live separated from me you are powerless.”
John 15:5 - TPT

In the Heart of the Night

In the scriptures, a day begins in the evening. F.B. Meyer in his commentary on Genesis 1 wrote, “God’s days begin in evenings, and always end in mornings.”

I had not yet arrived here in my writing thoughts – in the heart of the night – when I wrote When Persuaded Hearts Grieve Before the Dawn. Vineyard Days was paused with the Shulamites ‘R Us nodding off, contentedly sleepy. But ones were awakening wherever the Light in the gloom cast its beam on ears that would hear. Much like a knock on the door.

Right where we find the Song’s Beloved : asleep with a heart that was awake. Listening and hearing her Lover knocking.

“Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one.
My head is drenched with dew,
My hair with the dampness of the night.” 
Song of Songs 5:2b

And so, we have come to pivotal chapter five of the Song. Our Shulamite has lived and traversed through the first four chapters – with Shepherd Lover ever wooing her on. She has found herself exercised by Him in spirit, soul, and body. What began – how long ago? – in the heat of the day of chapter one, has brought her into this time and place in the heart of the night.

We can live without exploring. But with Shepherd Lover, we cannot explore without learning how to truly live. There is much to unpack as her Song sings on. I hope you will join me again next time. Till then –

Sleep well with your heart awake,

Gracefully Free

¹ II Timothy 2:6

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