Mitch McVicker
Album: Canticle of the Plains
Track: Love's As Strong
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Love's As Strong Lyrics Rich Mullins, Beaker, and Mitch McVicker
Vocals by Kevin Smith
Song of Solomon 8:6-7, Job 11:7-9
When love has got you in its throes
Even the summer's heat just freezes your soul.
And the sweetest song -
It just clanks along,
And the morning dew just says goodnight,
And leaves your heart undone.
It doesn't do to try and understand.
Nothin' that's as good as love ever made a lot of sense.
Like how the eagles fly
And how the rattlers slide
And what it is that comes to bind a woman and her man.
Love's as strong as death my love.
Unyielding as the grave.
Relentless as the desert sun.
And rivers cannot wash my love away.
Lord, I won't let it wash away.
And many waters cannot quench love.
There ain't nothing left to soothe you with.
Love has marked your soul the way the sun has marked your skin.
And there ain't no way to find no shade
When your soul's the very thing
That feeds the blaze that burns within you.
It just makes your cold heart melt.
The flames that burn as white as the very flames of hell.
So just hold on tight,
'Cause it's a long, wild ride
When you finally find the grace to love another as yourself.
Love's as strong as death my love.
Unyielding as the grave.
Relentless as the desert sun.
And rivers cannot wash my love away, away!
I won't let it wash away.
And many waters, it cannot quench love.
At this point, Buzz returns with Lefty ... from the trading post with guns and blankets and food and everything, and everyone is like happy that they will have something to fight with when the soldiers arrive. Of course, they know that they're all going to be beat, but they still think it's cool that they can fight, except for Frank, and he's ... having come through the civil war, he has begun to question the validity of violence, even in defense. And he's kinda going, "Man, I don't feel so good about this. I don't really ... if we want to follow the example of Christ, if we want to live according to the gospel, don't we need to turn the other cheek?" And of course, Lefty is going, "Turning the other cheek won't do any good." Ivory is going, "Turning the other cheek only means that we will lose everything that we've come to find." And that may work if you're a great mystic, but if you're a regular guy like I am, and you want to have a family, and you want ... blah blah blah blah blah ... turning the other cheek doesn't make a lot of sense." So Frank says, "I need to go pray. I need to go find out what it is I'm supposed to do here. How do I respond to this sort of thing?" So then, when he leaves, the other three guys are going ... Buzz says, "The thing that worries me is that I might turn the other cheek in vain. It doesn't bother me that I might be killed or whatever, but it does bother me that that may have no meaning; it may not change anything. And a life is a terrible thing to waste." But Buzz calls the other guys back to focusing on the character of Christ, and the way he does it is by bringing a focus to the stations of the cross, but looking at ... how did Christ conquer the world? And in the stations of the cross, you see the final suffering of Jesus, and you realize that there is in some bizarre miraculous way, that we do conquer by surrendering, that we do overcome by a method that makes no sense to humankind. So no one is sure at this point exactly how they're going to respond, but they know that whatever their response is, it has to be out of obedience to Christ, and they're looking now to Christ and saying, "If we want to obey you, what would that look like. What did obedience look like in your life." And this is the song that Buzz sings that is about that.
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