The Love of God
The Bible says:
“Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the
LORD.” Psalms 107:43 (KJV)
As with so many of our favorite hymns, “The Love of God”
was born in adversity. Frederick Lehman (1868–1953), who wrote the hymn with his daughter, had experienced the failure
of his once-profitable business, which left him packing crates of oranges and lemons in Pasadena, California, to make ends
meet. He said: “One day, during short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked
up a scrap of paper and, seated upon an empty lemon box pushed against the wall, with a stub pencil,
added the (first) two stanzas and chorus of the song…Since the lines (3rd stanza from the Jewish
poem) had been found penciled on the wall of a patient’s room in an insane asylum after
he had been carried to his grave, the general opinion was that this inmate had written the epic
in moments of sanity.”
Were we to fill that ocean with ink and stretch out scrolls
to cover those skies, and were every tree, of every kind, a pen, and every one of us a scribe, we still could capture only
hints and whispers of the boundless love of God. We would drain the ocean dry. And then still have so much more to say.
Let that never keep us from saying as much as we can. We ought to thank God for those, like Frederick
Lehman, who help us taste and see and feel realities we will never fully grasp. We ought to thank God for the poor soul clinging
to faith in that asylum. If he had not scrawled those words on that wall, from his embattled memory, would we have ever heard
them? We ought to thank God for the pen that crafted those original lines, in Aramaic, so many years earlier. Who could have
imagined just how far his words would float, like a letter in a bottle, and how many hearts they would brighten and strengthen
over centuries?
And we ought to ask God for fresh words that might open worlds like these for others. How might we help
others feel the love beyond expressing? If words fail us, we could start by writing the beloved lines where someone might
someday see them.
Daily Chronological Bible Reading: Psalm
106-107
