Love that is as strong as death. Unquenchable love. Burning love.  Love that cannot be bought at any price. That is our text this morning. There are so many definitions of love! We use the word to describe food (I love BBQ) to styles (I love that dress on you) to patriotism (I love America). After time, it loses its meaning. A few years ago I took Carol to my old elementary school in Cincinnati and had her sit on the stone bench in the playground where in the fourth grade Tina Lewis gave me my first kiss.  I remembered that kiss for a week. We call that puppy love.…

Tradition has it this text is the romance between Solomon and his second wife, Naamah. His first wife from Egypt was basically a political maneuver when he was a young man and the only wife mentioned by name is his second who was an Ammonite, a foreigner and dark-skinned. As well, as he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, I find it hard to believe he would have had the energy or creativity to compose such a letter to each of them. This was his first love and the mother of his son, Rehoboam, who became his successor.  This is Solomon before his great success, his wandering from the faith,…

So, here we are at the end and King Lemuel’s mother has given him some wise advice. “Do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings.” If you have read the news or watched television any time in the last forty years then I don’t need to say much about this one.  There are women who are attracted to powerful men. There are powerful men who are distracted and seduced by certain kinds of women and they always seem to find each other. How many leaders have been brought down by lingering when they should have left? How many have wasted themselves and their missions…

It was Karl Marx who said capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. The very thing that makes it effective – the creation of wealth – will cause it to implode on itself. Systems often do and individuals as well.  As Oswald Chambers said, it is not our weaknesses that cause us to sin because we know them and guard against them. It is the overuse and overconfidence in our strengths. “Unguarded strength is actually a double weakness, because that is where the least likely temptations will be effective in sapping strength. The Bible characters stumbled over their strong points, never their weak ones.” As you know, I do not…