Highly instructive for man is a life comprised of many factors, large and small. Each person defines for self, perhaps unconsciously, what is large or small meaning, or in between. One of these is intimacy. It is first seen in the tiny infant nestled by mother, especially in contact at her breast. It actually began earlier in the womb, but we know too little of that process. (There are biological factors we know little about.) The growing child is comforted when carried by Dad, fed by mother, and sleeping near both. All this is so instilled that in adulthood we seek some advanced expression of what has gone before. In context this likely leads to marriage for those who register physical intimacy needs. If there is no intimacy a marriage may be annulled. In closure the acts of intimacy, not the marriage ceremony, end single life and make the twain one flesh. Intimacy has various avenues of fulfillment, not just physical-sexual. One can be intimate with God, and that has no sexual context, but the very existence of a book like that of Solomon’s Song affirms the legitimacy of proper physical intimacy as analogy of a personal and private relationship with God. That relationship becomes integral to those who activate faith in Christ.
We ought to seek maturity in our lives, and intimacy is a factor that needs that seasoning through stages of separation, marginality and reintegration. Our separation, from a previous experience to something else, related in nature to the former, may go well or poorly. The person may never emerge from marginality, or move easily through without losing meaning. Ministers have used the experience of Israel moving from Egypt (separation), through the wilderness (marginality), to the promised-land (reintegration). For those with the long view of life progression, the point of reintegration becomes another point of separation, as persons move along life’s transitions. Life is in progress – or may stall in a wilderness of neutrality.
In Scripture we find intimacy handled in many ways. Hannah was taken with the meaning of it for her life. She yearned for a child, so to meet some of the meaning she held for her life. She had other personal motives as well. God honored her with the child, Samuel. In another instance, Samson did not handle the matter of intimacy well. He did not move from marginality into reintegration. He was a stalled adolescent relative to intimacy. He played various fun games when he was expected to lead his people. Delilah, knowing well the scenario, played effectively on Samson and won her point. Even so, we have some sympathy for him when he appears to confess in his death his follies, even in revenge for his eyes. We commit follies that keep us from maturity and peace. Only in his last act, did Samson sense identity and what might have been in intimacy with God. The physical intimacy between husband and wife, when understood, becomes an analogy of spiritual meaning – missed in the sexual gestures related to nature.
Rite of passage was common tribal practice advancing generations. This is seldom discussed in an age that gains its process from media, popular impulses, materialism, and permissiveness. Many children stumble through puberty and never mature. We do not inform our children well to recognize human drives, including intimacy passions, and how to make them gifts, not enemies, of warmth, love, well-being, and bonding so magnificent as to procreate life. Managing life poorly in the world is wandering in a wilderness, unsure of what all this life means to happiness, even to faith in God, who made us for joy and each other. Not every generation is blessed or well taught in this higher context. The virgin Mary, presumed to be about sixteen years of age, expressed physical sexual intimacy as knowing. She had learned well before the occasion the law of Moses about sexual experience, when it was legitimate (and expected), and her mother provided the important information that mothers ought to have in balance to communicate to their daughters, and fathers to their sons. The experience is cast in love, in exclusiveness, in ecstasy, in responsibility as the fully aware (mature) person. When violated it becomes sordid, an oath against God, a distortion of meaning. There is something in us that gives pause in respect for this intimacy and meaning of fidelity. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020