It's Spring

"His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers…"   Song of Solomon 5:13

At last, the flowery month has come! March winds and April showers have done their work, and the earth is all bedecked with beauty. Come my soul, put on your holiday attire and go forth to gather garlands of heavenly thoughts. You know where to take yourself, for to you “the beds of spices” are well known, and you have so often smelled the perfume of “the sweet flowers,” that you will go at once to your Beloved and find all loveliness, all joy in him. That cheek once so rudely smitten with a rod, often covered with tears of sympathy and then defiled with spit, that cheek, as it smiles with mercy is as fragrant aroma to my heart. You did not hide your face from shame and spitting, O Lord Jesus, and therefore I will find my dearest delight in praising thee. Those cheeks were furrowed by the plough of grief, and crimsoned with red lines of blood from your thorn-crowned temples; such marks of love unbounded cannot but charm my soul far more than “pillars of perfume.” If I may not see the whole of His face I would behold His cheeks, for the least glimpse of Him is exceedingly refreshing to my spiritual sense and yields a variety of delights. In Jesus I find not only fragrance, but a bed of spices; not one flower, but all manner of sweet flowers. He is to me my rose and my lily, my heartsease and my cluster of camphire. When He is with me it is May all the year round, and my soul goes forth to wash her happy face in the morning-dew of his grace, and to solace herself with the singing of the birds of his promises. Precious Lord Jesus, let me in very deed know the blessedness which dwells in abiding, unbroken fellowship with you. I am a poor worthless one, whose cheek you have deigned to kiss! O let me kiss you in return with the kisses of my lips.

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Morning, C.H. Spurgeon