His banner over me
The bride at the banquet
The Song of Solomon is a love poem, and the church has long read it also as a picture of the love between Christ and the soul. In one of its tenderest lines, the bride describes being brought by her beloved into a place of feasting and joy, and over her flies something raised and public.
He brought me to the banquet hall, she says, and his banner over me is love. A banner was a standard, a flag raised high over an army or a household, declaring openly to everyone who belonged to whom. And the banner flown over this beloved is not a record of her faults, not a warning, not a grudging tolerance. It is one word, hoisted for all to see: love.
This is how God claims his own. He does not hide his affection or keep it private and uncertain. He brings us into the feast and raises love like a flag over our heads, declaring before heaven and earth: this one is mine, and the banner that flies over them is my love.
“He brought me to the banquet hall. His banner over me is love.”
— The bride — Song of Solomon 2:4 (WEB)
Believe the banner God flies over you is not disappointment or grudging tolerance, but love, raised high and unashamed.
“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
We assume God's real feelings, if made public, would read as disappointment or reluctant tolerance, so we live as if his love were hidden and qualified. The interior work is to let the truth overwrite the assumption — that he brings you into the feast and raises love like a flag over you — until you stop hiding from a love that he himself displays openly.
When shame tells you what God really thinks of you this week, picture the banner he actually flies — love, raised high, dyed at the cross — and stand under it deliberately rather than hiding from it.
We are quick to assume that if God's true feelings went public the banner would read disappointment — the love real but grudging, kept quiet and qualified. But the flag the Father raises over you was dyed in the blood of his Son, the most public and costly declaration in history, and it reads, without one qualification, love.
Many of us imagine that if God's true feelings about us were made public, the banner over our heads would read something else — disappointment, or tolerance, or a list of the ways we have let him down. We assume his love is real but reluctant, the sort kept quiet and qualified. The Song corrects the picture. The flag he flies over you is not hedged or hidden. It is love, raised high, unashamed.
And lest we think this is mere sentiment, John tells us what that love cost: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice for our sins. The banner of love over your head was dyed in blood. It is the most public, most costly declaration in history, and it flies, openly, over you.
- What banner do I assume God flies over me?
- Do I believe his love is reluctant and hidden, or open and unashamed?
- What would change if I lived under a banner that reads love?
Lord, you have brought me into the feast and raised love like a flag over me, dyed at the cross. Let me live under that banner, unashamed and yours. Amen.