Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk

I'd gone over to the church with my guitar one evening to sit up near the dark pulpit and sing my prayers to God before retiring for the night. As I was in the midst of my musical devotions, I felt the inspiration for a new song rising in me. I fumbled on a chord progression and a melody began weaving its way through my mind. Suddenly, there was the image of a robed man riding through the desert on a great, white stallion. For a long-time songwriter, that's irresistible. I knew this song was to be a desert love song.

That seemed somewhat out of place in the midst of my prayer. I tried to ignor the image, with success. Finally, I told God my goodnights, and drove on home to sit down and get that song out of me. I knew I wouldn't sleep until I had done so. It ended up being a somewhat unusual love song, with the theme of two lovers who found each other against all odds in the sweltering and shivering cold of the desert by means of a perfumed tent. While the imagery was Arabian Nights exotic, there was enough of the story of my own wife's courage and sacrifice in our past relationship that I went in and sat on the edge of the bed and sang it, still not performance ready, for her. "Its really about us!" I told her.

But I learned the next morning that it was about more than I had thought. In my regular morning personal reading of the Bible, I happened upon the recipe for the perfumed annointing oil used in the sacred service of the sanctuary tent where God's people worshipped Him during the 40 years of desert wandering on their way to the Promised Land. (See Exodus 30:22-33) They had used that perfumed oil to annoint pretty much everything connected with the physical objects employed in their worship of God--the tent, the altars, and even the priests themselves. That original "Perfumed Tent" where God, the Great Lover, met with Israel, His Beloved, suddenly made sense to me. The intent behind what would have been a dry bit of Biblical history was plain. This was a love story between God and man.

As I went back to the lyrics to the song I'd written the night before when the imagery had been so impressed on my mind during my prayers, I saw even more than I had the first time. The white stallion is pictured as a part of the imagery of Jesus Second Coming, when He returns to earth for His people. (See Revelation 19:11-13) The three days in the "death zone" of the desert were comparable to Jesus three days in the heart of the earth after His crucifiction. Even the basic connection between the love between a man and a woman being a symbol of God's love for His people was in place. (See Ephesians 5:25-28)

The new song wanting to be written that had interupted my prayers had not been out of place after all. Curiously, a week later, as our Jamaician congregation met for the first time in their new church building in Salem, Massachusetts, my associate lay pastor conducted a service that involved using scented oil to consecrate the new building, its implements of worship, and also those who had gathered there to worship who wished to participate. I'd never seen that done before, but felt the spiritual significance of what occurred that day deeply as a result of what I had already experience in writing the lyric that follows...


Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk

Riding my white stallion through the desert,
Fingers tangled tightly in his mane.
My cloak trailing in the wind behind me,
Trying to remember my own name.
The sun's blinding eye high above me,
Dunes smoldering till they meet the sky.
My water bag holds memory of a swallow,
I swore I'd ride to meet her, or die.

Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.

I know I've only one chance in a thousand,
Another mirage vanishes in flame.
Then I catch the scent of rarest perfume,
Drawing me along the path it came.
There beyond these sand dunes I've been climbing,
Where the cool palm rises by the well--
I can see her Scarlet Tent at sunset.
She's waiting for the love I've come to tell.

Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.

For three days I was lost and wandering,
Crazed by the sun, I had lost my way.
Then she poured her jasmine perfume for me,
And its fragrance helped me find my way.
Her silken Scarlet Tent is stained and ruined now,
Rich jasmine bottles emspty on its floor.
But she lies in my arms 'neath bright stars,
We never will be parted anymore.

Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
Scarlet tent now stained with fragrance--and my journey's done.

c2009 Skip Johnson


"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 500 shekels of cassia--all according to the sanctuary shekel--and a hin of olive oil. Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anoinging oil. Then use it to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony, the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basis with its stand.'" Exodus 30:22-28 NIV