Under the Apple Tree

Do you have spaces, places, patterns, or songs that stir love in your heart for God?

What were the songs that God used to win your heart in the early days of your relationship with Him?

Do you have spaces or places where you’ve walked with God, encountered Him, met Him, and that represent for you altars on your journey of growing in love?

As I write about frequently, I love to read the biblical book of Song of Songs as an allegory about a journey of growing in love for God.

In the beginning of the Song, the Bride meets her Beloved, timid and shy, in awe that he is in love with her the way he is. She sings lines such as “Do not gaze at me because I am dark” (1:6) — displaying her sense of shock and even shame that her Beloved can love her even in her imperfections.

The first chapter is also filled with a sense of distance and a back-and-forth pursuit — “draw me after you, let us make haste” (1:4), which implies a chase, and the question of “tell me…where you pasture your flock” (1:7) implying that she is not yet with her Beloved’s comings and goings.

Yet, by the end of the poem, all sense of shame and doubt is gone, and the language of distance, chase, and pursuit is replaced with a language of union, oneness, and dedication until death.

The Bride sings:

A particular metaphor that we find at both the beginning of the Bride’s journey of growing in love and at the end of the song is that of an apple tree.

She sings in Chapter 2:

Thus, in the song, the apple tree represents a particular place of romance — one of the places where the Lover wooed his Beloved.

At the end of the song, we find the Lover fondly reminiscing about those early days under the apple tree:

This is beautiful! At the end of their love story, the Bridegroom remembers, reminisces, and sings about his memories of their earlier season of falling in love with each other.

Do we have the audacity to believe this is how Jesus feels about us?

Can we dare to believe that, just like a lover reminiscing about the early days of falling in love, Jesus can think about the songs we sang to Him and the places we encountered Him with similar fondness and even lovesickness?

Old Testament scholar Ellen F. Davis writes: “The lover’s garden is subtly but consistently represented as the garden of delight that Eden was meant to be, the place where life may be lived fully in the presence of God” (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, 232).

I believe that every space where God meets us, every song we sing that He uses to woo us, represent little Edens where we reclaim our original identity and destiny to walk with God in the cool of the Garden.

We were made to love Him, and the places, spaces, and memories we have with Him are the apple trees of our journey where we are building an intimate, relational history with the One who loves us unlike anyone else.

As we grow in love for God, I find it helpful to know and name the “apple trees” in our journey of growing in love for God. Where are the places that God has encountered you? What are the songs you sang, the books you read, the places you prayed that have indelibly marked your history with Him?

Once we can name these in our stories, we might find that God, just like the Lover in Song of Songs 8:5, uses particular songs, memories, moments, and patterns to remind us of our history with Him.

Have you ever been romanced by the Lord when a particular song you used to sing plays again? Or when you revisit a particular place and remember how He met you there?

Let Him romance you by reminding you of the places where He has met you!

As I’ve shared in various spaces, our family has recently moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and, as the glimmer of the newness is beginning to fade (I’m reminded frequently of Ronald Rolheiser’s admonition that no honeymoon lasts forever), I’m finding myself aching for the “apple trees” — the places where God has met me — in previous seasons. As I can no longer walk the neighborhoods and streets that were once my well-worn prayer routes, I have to find new ones.

Yet, I’ve found my heart strangely warmed by other “apple trees” in this season — God bringing to mind songs from old seasons that He has used to win my heart, and reminding me of moments when He met me, even if I can’t visit the physical place.

I also trust that, as I build new prayer rhythms and endeavor to love God from a new place, He can build Eden here, and I’ll have apple trees that I’ll look back from in decades — and that He’ll remind me of.

I’d love to invite us to pray today:

• Begin by taking some deep breaths in and out. Perhaps as you breathe in pray “Come,” and as you breathe out pray “Holy Spirit.”

• Once you feel settled, name: is there an “apple tree” that God is bringing to mind?

• Then, simply invite the love of God to nourish your heart.

I love hearing from those of you who are coming alive and living more in love with Jesus. Always feel free to hit “reply” and let me know if there is any way that I can support you in prayer.