Precious Stone Devotional Meditation: September 16

“As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among my sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste" ~ Song of Solomon 2:3

This is a lovely “apple-tree” simile. An apple tree in “the woods” is rare. One expects to see almost any other kind of tree but an apple tree growing in a wild stretch of woods. “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among my sons.”

“He is altogether lovely.”

She points to Him with pride. “As the apple tree among trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.” It is a quiet, deep joy in His very character that prompts this lovely statement. It is not a hard boasting that she belongs to the One who is the loveliest of all.

Too often we find this spirit among His followers. They look right down their righteous noses at those who have not met Him. They feel superior somehow. Surely it is not God’s doing that we should ever feel superior. “Learn of me,” said the One who is “as an apple tree among the trees of the wood.” And then He went on to remind us that He is “meek and lowly in heart.”

No pumped up fervor here. She speaks out of the overflow of her own knowledge of what He’s really like. She has seen Him as He is. She knows that He is “as the apple tree among the trees of the wood” because she has “sat down under his shadow with great delight.”

She knows He is the One for whom she has longed because “his fruit is sweet to [her] taste.” Can we witness so quietly and tenderly and with such disarming certainty to the delight of belonging to Jesus? Have we stopped long enough to be with Him? To sit down under His shadow? To know that His fruit is sweet to our taste?

“O taste and see that the Lord is good … Delight thyself … in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”