“I am black, but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar,
As the curtains of Solomon.”
– Song of Songs 1:5
One who never touches the Lord often justifies himself, but one who does touch the Lord will instead condemn himself. When we were not in the light, we did not see that we were black. We thought that our hearts were not black because we often prepared food for the love feast; our hands were not black because we served; our feet were not black because we followed Him. Actually, we were black to the point that we did not see our true condition. We may acknowledge that we harbored a little blackness in this or that area of our life, yet we still denied that we ourselves are entirely black.
Adapted from The Song of Songs: A Divine Romance, page 36.