Come, let's drink deep of love till morning; let's enjoy ourselves with love! (Proverbs 7:18)

I've got to be honest with you:  I don't know exactly what I would do in a Proverbs 7 situation -- where some seductively-dressed woman steps out of the shadows, embraces me with a passionate kiss, and starts telling me about the color of her bed sheets and the way they smell like myrrh and aloes and cinnamon... inviting me into her bedroom for a night of love, where I could experience those sweet bed sheets for myself.  Would I laugh at the audacity of it all?  Would I run away?  Or would I stick around and talk to her for awhile (just to be a good witness, you know)?  Would the idea intrigue me and entice me enough that I could actually go along with it?

The truth is I've never really had to confront this situation.  In high school I was a very mediocre athlete and decidedly not a master of the party scene.  I was a good student, especially with the languages, and a good trombone player -- but these aren't exactly the kinds of things that result in high school girls throwing themselves at you with their cinnamon sheets and all.  In college, I was in a committed relationship (which had its own fair share of physical excitement); but again, the residence halls where I lived were all male and I never really got into the downtown BG clubbing scene -- so ultimately I didn't really have to deal with the whole "Let's drink deep of love till morning" conversation until I was a newlywed (which didn't pose too much of a problem for either of us).  As an adult, well, I guess I just never really got that "Playboy" vibe going -- so the propositioning thing hasn't been much of a problem.  But as I read Proverbs 7, I'm reminded that I don't serve anyone by playing that "Aw, shucks, no one's gonna try pull that kinda thing on little ol' me."  If anything, this kind of thinking could potential set me up for even greater danger, if the right mix of circumstances ever came together, where I'd be like, "What?  Me sexy?  You want to do what till morning?  Golly, I never done thought about no colorful spiced sheets... I reckon that might be kinda interesting to see (just for research purposes of course)..."

Sex and love are powerful drugs.  In the right context, following the appropriate prescriptions, they can be wonderful things that make life very enriching.  But in the wrong context, they can be a recipe for disaster.

And as life wears on, men and women go through different cycles of ecstacy, stagnation, hope, disappointment, intimacy, loneliness... Even in good marriages, this cycle takes place.  And it seems almost inevitable that at some point, two lonely people are going to find each other. And in such circumstances, opportunism frequently trumps the best of intentions -- especially when no contingency planning has taken place.  Thus we have hundreds and thousands of examples of ill-considered sexual escapades, broken marriages, embarrassing stories, and a whole lot more of the disappointment and loneliness parts of the life cycle.

This is where the genius of Proverbs 7 becomes evident.  The Story of the Simple Young Man and the Wayward Wife lays out a scenario for all of us to consider.  It gives a chance -- even for us band-geeks and religious people -- to pause and consider how we would really respond to an invitation like "Come, let's drink deep of love till morning; let's enjoy ourselves with love!"  It gives us a chance to see how dangerous and foolish these temptations can really be.  When extramarital affairs are examined in the cool, clear light of day, we all see that they are ill-fated.  What goes around comes around, and all that crap.  But if we don't come to firm convictions about these dangers and take care to avoid such pitfalls -- our judgment may well be impaired in those midnight encounters of lonely strangers in the night.

Think about it.  What would you do?  Or better:  What WILL you do?