Catching Foxes

Catching Foxes

Bible: Song of Solomon 2:14-17

Reading

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards (V.15).

While talking on the phone with a friend who lives by the seaside, I said I loved hearing seagulls squawking on her end of the line. “They’re gross,” she replied. To her they are a daily pain. As a Londoner, I feel the same way about foxes. For me, they’re not cute, but annoying animals who leave smelly messes wherever they go. I believe God made seagulls and foxes—and like everything else they were good (GENESIS 1:25). But in this now broken world, they can be destructive, just like anything else.

Foxes appear in the poetry of the Song of Solomon, an Old Testament book that uses the love between a husband and wife as an illustration of the love between God and His people. The bride warns about little foxes, asking her bridegroom to catch them (SONG OF SOLOMON 2:15). Foxes, hungry for the vineyard’s grapes, could tear the plants apart. As the bride looks forward to their married life together, she doesn’t want destructive things getting in the way.

How can destructive ‘foxes’ disturb our relationship with God? For me, when I say yes to too many things, I can quickly get overwhelmed and cross. Or when I see friends falling out, I can be tempted to feel hopeless.

As I ask God to make me aware of these ‘foxes’ in my life—those self-centred ways of mine that sometimes I don’t even realise I have—my trust in Him increases, as does my sense of calm.

GOD PROTECTS OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.

Youth Edition – Our Daily Bread Ministries