Love as Strong as Death, Set Like a Seal

Listen. A voice is coming over the hills,
leaping like a deer, swift and glad.

"Look," she says. "He is coming.
Quick as a deer, sure as the morning.
He calls to me through the window.
He says, Rise up, my love. Come away.

The winter is over. Did you feel it leave?
The rain is gone. The flowers have come back.
The little birds are singing again.
Rise up, my dear one. Come away with me."

This is a song about two people
who love each other so much
they can hardly believe it is true.

And when her heart is full and glad,
she sings the dearest line of all:

"I am my beloved's,
and my beloved is mine."

Say it slowly. Feel how it fits.
I belong to him. And he belongs to me.
Like two hands holding.
Like a key that turns at last in its own door.

Then she asks for something brave.
She asks to be kept.

"Set me like a seal upon your heart,"
she says. "Set me like a seal upon your arm.
Press me there so close
that nothing can pull me loose.

For love is as strong as death.
Love will not let go.
It burns like a fire that the deepest sea
could never, ever put out.
You could pour every ocean over this love,
and it would still be burning."

Do you remember the flood, long before,
when water covered even the highest hills?
Waters like those
could never drown a love like this.

For this song is older than it knows.

There is a Bridegroom still to come.
One who would look at his people the way
the lover looks across the hills,
and say, Rise up. Come away. You are mine.

And when love asked him,
"How strong is it? Set me like a seal.
Let nothing pull me loose,"
he answered with his own two arms
stretched wide upon a cross.

Stronger than death, the song had said.
So he went down into death itself
to prove it, and came up again,
still holding on, still saying, You are mine.

So when you feel small,
when you wonder if anybody really chose you,
if anybody could love you and never, ever stop,
remember the seal pressed close to the heart.

He has set you there.
And no flood, no winter, no leaving,
nothing in all the world
can put that fire out.

You are his. He is yours.
And even now the Bridegroom is on his way,
coming over the hills to find you,
calling, Rise up, my love, and come away.