Skin

When the fruit is scarcest, its taste is sweetest. Irish Proverb

Have you ever thought about it?

The appeal of skin?

The pleasure of sliding fingertips over the surface?

Today, we are in an ever-escalating arms race to see who can reveal more skin.

Fashion, even for the smallest girls among us, is suggestive and revealing.

Music videos leave little to the imagination and popular music speaks to a listening public that seemingly feels absolutely no shame.

So where have we come and how have we progressed with equality and sexual freedom?

If anything, women are more the "meat on the market" now than when I was a young woman.

They are competing in a high stakes game of who can catch the eye and the desire of their intended target quicker or better or with more promise.

Too many young women have bought into the lie that their worth is in their sexual desirability. They clothe themselves to attract advances. They advertise their wares shamelessly and barter them away on the cheap.

Is it any wonder that there are so many broken and hardened hearts?

When women are not valued for who they are, when their beauty is measured in sex appeal, and when the most intimate of relationships is considered as interchangeable as fashion trends, something has got to give, and it has.

The family fiber of lifetime commitment is unraveling. Faithfulness and monogamy are considered unattainable and unreasonable.

In the same way that fruit harvested too soon never is what it could be, the sweetness of the deepest of intimacies is not experienced or tasted in its intended ripeness and fullness if tasted too soon.

But back to the skin.

There is something in every single one of us that craves touch.

An infant will die if it is not caressed.

It is a hunger that is as real and as essential as food and air.

We all need touch.

We all need to be touched.

But we have confused touch with sex.

There is nothing more beautiful, more natural, and more normal, than a mother and her child.

They have shared a heartbeat, a connection, a oneness, that is so tender, so remarkable that for them to be close is completely, unequivocally understandable.

The physical bonding of a mother nursing her child is a profound connection. Food for the body and food for the soul as they touch, skin to skin, intimate and warm, comforting and close.

This is good and right and innocent and healthy.

And it has nothing to do with sex ... or maybe it does.

Intimacy

As a mother comforts her child, so I'll comfort you.

Isaiah 66:12

Go back to the mother and child.

Their touching, their nuzzling, snuggling, warm and fuzzy moments are filled with intimacies that they alone know.

Their hearts are knit to one another in those tender moments.

Look at the eyes of an infant and its Mommy when they are interacting with one another.

Watch the warmth and love flow from them.

Back and forth, back and forth.

A lovely rhythmic interchange of communication and affection.

Trust grows and attachments are made, connectors that will keep them secure in their relationship as the days, months, and years flow by.

Connections that will be a secure foundation as the child matures and stands on its own.

Affections that will encourage them to keep on letting the intimacy flow even as the dynamics change.

There is a part of every one of us that wants that.

We want to be close to someone.

We want to be known and fully loved.

We want to be able to touch without reservation and whisper secrets and be completely intimate with someone. And we want them to love us for it.

The Right Time

There is a time for everything and a season for every purpose.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

I grew up in Nebraska.

My dad was adamant about having a garden and I remember many mornings throughout my teen years spent weeding and picking the produce and trying to get the chores done before the arrival of the day's unwelcome heat.

I never thought about it much then.

It was just what we did, and Dad always had a big garden, so summers were filled with red ripe tomatoes and sweet juicy cucumbers. Crisp green beans hung like green crescents from the vines and squash and melons and pumpkins came along in their season. There were endless fields of corn and wheat and sometimes we would even have some popcorn growing in our garden patch.

Everything had its season, and my Dad could tell just by running his hands over a head of grain or an ear of corn if it was time to harvest.

We knew to check below the leafy, frilly green carrot tops to be sure the carrot had developed below. Radishes and onions, the same.

Now I live in California where fruits and grains and nuts and berries seem to rotate seasons so that something is ready for harvest almost year-round.

It is a huge industry and the growers know when they must begin the harvest and how to plan so that the fruit will be market-ready.

The problem is, in order for the fruits or vegetables to endure shipping and travel; they must be picked early, before they are fully ripe.

Now I can, for convenience sake, go to the grocery store and pick up a big tomato just about any time of the year.

It looks like a tomato. It is red and it has seeds like a tomato and it slices like a tomato.

Just don't bother arguing with my mouth about it!

You see, my friend Floyd grows tomatoes every summer.

He calls me when he has picked a bunch, and I know that it is time to go and get a pound of bacon because I am going to be able to make a BLT that will have my taste buds singing for days.

Floyd always waits until those tomatoes are fat and red and ripe on the vine before he picks them.

They are allowed to soak up the sun and drink in the water and become a miracle of a true beefsteak tomato that is firm and fragrant and makes my taste buds dance when married to the bacon and lettuce on a summer's day feast.

Home-grown, vine-ripened, dew-kissed.

There is nothing like a tomato that has actually been allowed to reach maturity connected to the vine before it is picked.

If you have never tasted one, I need to put you in touch with Floyd!

If all you have known are the red things that you find in produce departments across the country, you do not have the slightest clue what you are missing.

A vine-ripened tomato is a wonderful thing.

But love, the kind of juicy, warm, sweet, miracle of physical marriage between a man and a woman trumps anything in the food realm.

Our culture has tried to make us believe that sex ........ any sex .......... is good.

And it just isn't true.

But we keep on trying.

And it leaves a bitter taste in our mouths time and time again.

Innocence

There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact.

The Message I Cor 6:16

For a country that wants to go green and have bluer skies and clearer streams and air that is rarified and pure, we sure do...