Here's a link to my recent sermon, "How to Write a Love Letter," on Song of Songs (Solomon), chapter 4 (Oct 17, 2010). In this sermon I look primarily at the relationship between two human lovers, and acknowledge the barriers and pain many relationships experience. It offers a spiritual way toward the renewal of love even in the most entrenched relationships. Here's an excerpt:

Some of you are stuck in a relationship that has years of pain and suffering, where there’s little true love. There may be commitment (and you’re to be commended for that), but that’s all there is. Maybe you’re married—twenty or forty or sixty years.

You go to bed at night alone. Your spouse is more in love with Facebook than with you. Or she putters away in her sewing room to avoid the pain of crawling into bed beside you with that dull ache, wanting only to be held, but the pain of the past has put a wall between you that seems insurmountable.

And all this talk of love is at best frustrating; maybe it’s infuriating. There are some among us who are sitting this series out. It’s just too painful to face this love poem week after week when love is only a dream.

If that’s you, let me say this as gently and compassionately as possible, but as forcefully as necessary. Do not close your heart to love. Even if you’re not likely to get the love you long for anytime soon, you can and must give it. Not for the good of the person you almost hate because of the pain they’ve caused you—but for your own good.

You need to love. You can give love. But you learned that love is conditional. You learned that love is limited.

For more, click on this audio link . . .