The Bride Searches for Her Beloved

She

I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking. “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.”

I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.