The Fiery Love of Pentecost
Author: Abby Carpenter
August 28, 2025
As I prepared for my wedding on June 14th, the weekend after Pentecost Sunday, a particular passage came to me several times—Song of Solomon 8:6-7.
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the Lord.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised.
I found myself captivated by these verses, especially when connected to Pentecost’s miracle. We read in Acts 2:1-4 about the Holy Spirit coming to rest on Jesus’ disciples as tongues of fire, filling them and enabling them to speak in different languages.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
God revealing Himself through fire is, of course, a recurring theme in Scripture. Think of the burning bush that appeared to Moses (Exodus 3:2), the pillar of fire that guided the Israelites through the wilderness (Exodus 13:21), and the defeat of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:38).
In the passage in Song of Solomon, the Lover and the Beloved are separated. Readers wonder, much as in Acts before the Spirit descends, when the reunion might occur. Nevertheless, the Beloved, identified by many commentators as God’s people, knows confidently that her passionate Lover, identified as our Lord, will ultimately be united with her.
Although these verses about God’s fiery love are undeniably lovely, some might see them as overly romantic, superficial, and untrue. After all, fire is all too easily extinguished.
The song “This Little Light of Mine,” suggesting that Satan can blow out our little lights with a single huff, has captured the fearful imagination of many of us. We may suspect that, if we are not vigilant, Satan might extinguish our faith and strip away our hope for eternal life.
This idea resonates with our mere human existence. Tolstoy likened the fragility of human life to a flickering light in a lamp. We are acutely aware of the many ways that human life, wonderful and precious, ends. Life can gradually dim or be suddenly snuffed. Unlike the Beloved, we often struggle to maintain confidence in the fiery love of our Lord amid the spiritual and physical threats we may face.
In the recent flooding of the Guadalupe River, certain areas of Texas experienced a 20-foot surge in as little as 38 minutes. Most tragically, nearly a quarter of the fatalities were of young campers and counselors at a Christian summer camp. While reading their stories, I found comfort in the strong faith attributed to the children who died.
One particular story touched my heart and evoked the words of Song of Solomon 8:6-7. Two young sisters, Blair and Brooke Harber, were vacationing at their grandparents’ house near the river. After the disaster, their bodies were discovered drifting away, their hands locked together. Blair and Brooke’s family and friends found solace in the girls’ sincere trust in Jesus. The Catholic school they attended described the situation beautifully: “Even in their last moments, they held tightly to each other…a powerful symbol of their bond and their trust in God.”
Even in their final moments, Blair and Brooke knew, much like the Beloved in Song of Solomon, that many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. This sentiment is beautifully captured by the seventeenth-century Protestant poet Katharina Regina von Greiffenberg: “Hell’s riff-raff comes with dragon-venom, shoots streams of poison at our Light of Life. And yet, God’s love burns in the sludge of mockery’s ocean.”
Such a striking image of hope and redemption reminds us of how we can thrive in a broken world in light of Pentecost. We can live like the Beloved in the Song of Solomon. We can live like Blair and Brooke.
Abigail Carpenter graduated this past spring from Rice University in Houston, Texas, with a degree in Classical Studies and Biosciences. She is the author of Forget Me Not: Memories of a Memory Caregiver.
Photo by Cullan Smith on Unsplash.
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