Potter County Baptist Church, Inc.

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PennDot Pick-up: TBA
May 13th Benevolence Meeting @ 5:45

 

           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  

 

 

 

 

 


Sunday Morning Service:
Genesis
Wednesday Night Service:
Ephesians

Please see Pastor Fred if you are interested in Baptism.
 

Birthdays/Anniversaries This Month

 

 1st Earl Higley (Memorial)

2nd Cristopher Hurley
9th Tommy Walker
18th Travis Wilson
18th Andy Hudak (Memorial)
23rd Shayla Matthews
23rd Jennifer Perkins
24th Gwen Kemp (Memorial)
22nd Rod & Kim Dickerson
29th Chris & Amy Bickel


 

Potter County Baptist Church * 867 Eleven Mile Road * Shinglehouse, PA * US * 16748

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