This is My Love, and This is My Friend

Happy Valentine’s Day!  For all you married fellas out there, I want to let Scripture remind us of some truths to help us love our spouses better.

You need to focus on your wife more. She needs your undivided attention. In order to focus on her properly, you might be interested concerning how she focuses on you. While, hopefully, she is physically attracted to you, she also is attracted to things other than merely your impressive physique.

What is it about you that your wife would say was most attractive?

Read Song of Solomon 5:10-16 and notice what this bride says about her husband taking into consideration that he has just complimented her extravagantly concerning her physical attributes.

10 My love is fit and strong, notable among ten thousand.11 His head is purest gold. His hair is wavy and black as a raven. 12 His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, washed in milk and set like jewels. 13 His cheeks are like beds of spice, towers of perfume. His lips are lilies, dripping with flowing myrrh. 14 His arms are rods of gold set with topaz. His body is an ivory panel covered with sapphires. 15 His legs are alabaster pillars set on pedestals of pure gold. His presence is like Lebanon, as majestic as the cedars.

16 His mouth is sweetness. He is absolutely desirable. This is my love, and this is my friend, young women of Jerusalem. 

Did you catch what she said about him? She thought her husband was “fit and strong” (v. 10). She mentioned his head, hair, eyes, cheeks, lips, arms, body, and legs. Her husband is eye-candy! She knows how to shower him with compliments. He is either a stud or at least beheld as a stud by his wife. Either way, he’ll take it!

While she loves his physical attributes, she doesn’t stop there. She also makes mention of something that should clue men into their wives: “His mouth is sweetness. He is absolutely desirable. This is my love, and this is my friend, young women of Jerusalem” (SS 5:16). She loved that her husband’s mouth was full of sweetness. This probably doesn’t mean kissable lips since she had already alluded to that in verse 13. It probably means that the words that come out are kind. He is absolutely desirable. He is the total package. He strives to be a complete, consistent man.

And in addition to being her love, he is also her friend. In fact, it seems that, for a woman, the two are interwoven together. While the groom primarily notices the external, the bride notices and mentions both.

How would your wife write about you? If she was writing, how would she fill in the blanks:
My husband’s mouth is full of ____________.
He is absolutely _______________.
This is my _________ and my _____________.

In an effort to love your wife better today, find out what it takes to be her friend.