My Beloved Has Gone Down to His Garden

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today, we celebrate St. Valentine, who was martyred in 269 AD for boldly preaching the gospel to the Emporer and for secretly marrying persecuted Christians. Today, in honor of his memory (and a lot of help from commercialization) we celebrate romantic love in all its forms.

Valentine’s Day is personal to me because I had a dramatic encounter with the Holy Spirit fifteen years ago today that changed my life forever.

I shared the details of this in a recent sermon I preached, but today I’ll simply share that nothing can compare to the indescribable joy of experiencing God’s love for us. Peter writes:

After encountering God’s love for me, Peter’s words have become real in my heart. And they have been continually real for the past fifteen years of my life.

I believe it is possible to experience real love for a God we can’t see, and I believe it is possible to experience indescribable and glorious joy in our prayer lives.

So, for me, Valentine’s Day is both a fun day to celebrate the romantic love in my life (I love you, Morgan!) and it is a beautiful anniversary of a day when I was indelibly swept up into an even greater love story — that of God and his Bride, the church.

Everything we long for in romantic love — to pursue and be pursued, to enjoy and be enjoyed, to delight and be delighted in, to have someone overcome obstacles and trials for the sake of love for us — is present and even fulfilled in the way that God pursues us, delights in us, and overcomes every obstacle to be with us.

Romantic love, at its best, prophesies this reality. Romantic love gone wrong can stir in us a deeper hunger and desire for fulfillment that can only come from God’s love for us.

This way of looking at our relationship with God is present everywhere in Scripture, but most potently in the Song of Songs, which has historically been read as an allegory of the love between God and his people.

When the Bride in Song of Songs wakes in the night and can’t find her Beloved, she goes on a journey searching for him. This season of learning to sing even in the night is instrumental in her journey — just as night seasons are for many of us — but today I want to highlight where the Bride finds her Beloved after this arduous journey of searching.

The night is finally over and she finds her Beloved when she declares:

Where does she find him? In the garden!

This is significant on at least three levels:

1. The level of their love story

The garden is the place where he has met her before. When he is first romancing her, she asks where he pastures his flock and he invites her to come and meet him there (1:7-8), and when she does they have one of their first exchanges of love where he compares her to lilies (2:1-7). Then, throughout the story, this garden filled with lilies where the Lover pastures his flock represents a place of meeting and love for the two of them (2:16; 8:5).

2. The level of the Creation & Temple imagery in the Song

Song of Songs is filled with creation imagery, and the garden itself in the Song is meant to echo the original garden of Eden. The Song is also rich with Temple imagery as, throughout the Song (as well as the whole Bible, actually), the Temple is meant to represent Eden as it’s the place where God’s relationship with humanity is restored. (So Eden = the Temple = the garden in Song of Songs).

Ultimately, the writer of the Song suggests through rich extended metaphor that living into our relationship with God is the way that we fulfill the Edenic vision of walking with God in the cool of the Garden.

Just as Adam walked daily with his Father, we, through entering into a love story with God, can live just as Adam and Eve did in the daily presence of God.

3. The level of the role of the Garden of Eden in the whole biblical narrative

Ultimately, God’s vision is for Eden to fill the whole earth (as God commands Adam and Even to “Fill the earth” in Gen 1:28). God’s glory is going to cover the earth, just like in Eden, like the waters cover the seas (Habakkuk 2:14). And we, like Adam and Eve, are meant to be priests, partnering with God to expand the Edenic Temple to the ends of the earth until the Day when God permanently dwells among us (Revelation 21:3). (I know this is a lot of big ideas here — I do my best to break this down in a recent sermon I preached.)

What does this mean for the Bride?

It means she finds her Beloved in the history that she has built with him.

What does this mean for us?

It means that we are invited to seek and find God by building a real relational history with him. Just like a human romance, we are invited to build a history with God with real relational exchanges and conversations.

It means that God wants to impact our emotional lives (like 1 Peter 1:8 talks about) and not just our intellect.

It means that God has real love for us and that it’s possible to feel real love for him that’s more fulfilling than any human love.

It means that we are invited to live in the greatest love story of all time — in the context of a continual conversation with the living God.

It means that just like today I can remember the places where my wife and I have fallen in love with each other, I can also remember the spaces and places in which God has romanced me. I can commemorate the places where he has encountered me. I can sing the songs that he has used to romance me. I can revisit the verses in Scripture that he has used to speak to me.

And, when I’m in a season where I can’t quite figure out where God is, I can find him in the history that I have built with him.

In this way, Song of Songs 6:2 is a microcosm of the whole biblical storyline: as we learn to seek and find God by building a history with him, we are playing a part in learning how to be priests — to host the presence of God, to seek God in particular places and spaces, and to be a part of inviting God to find his resting place among us as a foretaste of the day the Edenic Temple will cover the earth.

(This also is the inspiration for our name, Restless Hearts, Resting Places, that as we seek to find our resting place in God, God is busy building his resting place among us!)

Friends, we live in a love story. In fact, we live in the greatest love story of all time!

It’s a love story so grand that God is eternally inviting us who so often look for love in a thousand lesser places to find ultimate fulfillment in him.

It’s a love story so grand that by participating in it, we are actually taking part in the restoration of the earth as God seeks to build his resting place among us.

Valentine’s Day, for me, is a date on the calendar when God invaded my time and romanced me. Where God both grabbed my restless heart and showed me what it could look like to find my resting place in him and when he invited me into the adventure of expanding Eden, the place where God dwells, to the ends of the earth.

What are the dates and times where God has met you?

Have you marked them, celebrated them, commemorated them? Have you let God romance you by reminding you of those moments?

Where are the places where God has romanced you?

What are the songs that have marked seasons of your walk with him?

What are the verses that have shaped and guided your pursuit of God?

Do you dare to dream of a relationship with God where hearing certain songs can invoke deep affection in your heart, where dates on the calendar can stir up lovesick nostalgia remembering how he romanced you, where places can memorialize hushed prayers and promises spoken that only you and he remember?

Friends, find him in the history you have built with him!

If I can ever support you in your journey of coming alive and living in love with Jesus, please don’t hesitate to hit “reply” on this email and let me know.

-Ryan

P.S. It is one of the greatest joys of my life to help people come alive and live in love with Jesus, especially by waking up to the continual conversation we get to enjoy with God. Our team is working on creating some beautiful prayer resources this year, starting with a daily prayer journal designed to help you grow in your ability to hear God’s voice. Please consider becoming a founding partner with us to receive every resource we create in 2025 completely free!